One of the dilemmas facing people attempting to implement the Track Your Plaque program (TYP) in their lives is finding a doctor to work with. There’s a need for ordering blood tests, for getting advice, double checking on supplements/medications to try, etc.
I had been thinking that my HMO isn’t particularly a great one for doing TYP within.
But a casual comment from a friend got me to rethink that question and triggered still another thought about how to “shoehorn” the TYP program into a physician/patient relationship.
In this post, I’m going to explain how this shoehorn works in terms of what I’m going to try to do with my HMO. I haven’t actually tried these ideas yet but will in the next few weeks.
Oh… I almost forgot to say thanks to the friend whose comment triggered the idea.
Thanks!
(image courtesy of aidsforarthritis.com)
I was explaining to this friend that I had sent an internal email to my HMO Primary Care Physician asking some questions about a blood test. And my friend said, “you know, all the correspondence you send and receive from your physician becomes a part of your medical record.”
Now, at first I thought that this wasn’t a good thing and that I’d better be sure not to say anything stupid in a note to him. But as I thought about it more, I realized the potential leverage that this fact gives me and, in fact, gives everyone who utilizes this kind of correspondence.
What I’m going to do is prepare a document and generate an adobe acrobat file (pdf) of all my blood test results done outside of my HMO plan, my CAC scan results, my medication and supplement list, as well as a page of medical reference links that I’d like the physician to see. I’ll find some web site I can load the document to and make it available for download by the physician. In my note, I’ll ask the physician to let me know when the document as been downloaded so I can erase it.
At the next appointment with the physician, I’ll bring a printed paper copy of all the same materials for both myself and the physician to review in person.
What will doing this accomplish?
It will allow me to present the information that I want the physician to review more intelligently and at the same time place that information in my medical record in a format of my choosing.
But there’s one more very important element to this strategy of getting physician assistance in doing TYP. That element is to wait to do this until there are some kind of personal positive blood test or CAC scan results to report.
If I prepare the materials and talk to the physician without improvement in my own numbers, then it’s easy for the physician to dismiss the TYP program without thinking about it. However, because I’ve waited to bring up TYP until after I have very positive blood test results that are a direct result of being on the program, the physician cannot dismiss what I’m doing right? He or she must consider my doing it seriously or, at a minimum, propose some other program that has the potential to accomplish the same dramatic improvement of results.
And we know how difficult that would be right?
I’m going to try these ideas out in the near future and I’ll let you know how it works out.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:23 am
[…] Original post by Heart Cipher […]
December 19th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Being a programmer, a heart disease victim and a TYP member, I wrote a simple piece of software to remember my medication, test reports and my daily calorie intake/burnout. The software generates a few charts for all the above parameters and I get a sense of achievement when I see a downward/constant calorie intake, upward burn rates and downward test numbers.
)
Originally I was thinking of putting the software online, where people with similar problems could come and save their data and share it with their physicians, see the trends etc. But as you pointed out, privacy is a concern. So I’m using the tool only for myself right now.
Please do let me know if such a thing, with some more relevant features would help your cause. I will be more than happy to implement it and give it to you in a week or two. (Should I mention that it would cost nothing and the tool is open-source?
Please send me an email if you feel it could help.
Thanks!
-Neelesh
December 19th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Neelesh,
I think that would be helpful. If you provide, I’ll post and readers here can give you feedback on upgrades they’d like to see.
Thanks.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Great! I will get back in a few days.
December 19th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
A great way to monitor your calories, health stats, health notes is Cron-O-Meter (free download at http://spaz.ca/cronometer/). I have used it for a couple of years, and it is very easy to use, and has the entire USDA database of foods… also breaks down daily macronutirent, as well as vitamins, minerals, lipids, etc. Great way to see where to make tweaks in your diet!
Happy Holidays!
December 19th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Neelesh and All:
Like you, I was a “computer guy” who bumped into Dr. Davis. I was in for an exam when a computer crashed so I took a look at it for him and we started talking. I too thought his ideas were groundbreaking and that is how the Track Your Plaque website was launched.
These are all great ideas and we should discuss how to implement them. I think the key is for all the applications to share a common, searchable database so that data can be shared across applications and between members (with consent of course).
As of now, everything is implemented in ASP/ASP.NET and migrating from simple Access databases to SQL. That is not an endorsement of Microsoft. It just means we could get IIS server space cheap I was a better (well, faster anyway) ASP programmer than a PHP programmer.
The new website wil be up in a few months and we will have something to take potshots at. Prior to that we should develop a way to collaborate. aCipher and I already have shared some ideas between ourselves. Maybe it is time to create an informal “development community.”
Regards,
HeartHawk
December 19th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
HeartHawk, good idea. Though I’m not an ASP.Net programmer, (In fact, none of the MS technologies
), I will be glad to help.
I have a dedicated server (FreeBSD) running at recoverytrail.com. We can use that, for any purpose (hosting, applications, databases etc), if needed. It would be very interesting to see the patterns emerging out of TYP data (If TYP members are willing to share it, that is.)
Thanks!
Neelesh
December 19th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
What a great idea to share our personal typ data. It would be interesting to see a statistical analysis