Friday, April 24, 2009

Electronic medical records have people abuzz. What's the reality?

"Primary care physician Matt Handley believes that information technology enables him to provide better patient care. So much so that he recently spent an afternoon hooking up a computer and DSL line at the home of a patient so she can contact him more frequently.

Handley is the associate medical director for quality and informatics at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, a nonprofit health system armed with technology systems that have replaced paper records and enable patients to take part in their healthcare online."

Click here for more on the information revolution.

Good News April 24, 2009

Woman gives birth to twins on Fifth Ave.

After nearly 40 years as a nurse, Lucille Nassery had no problem identifying the sounds coming in the window from Fifth Avenue. Those were definitely the sounds of childbirth.

“There’s a certain kind of sound that comes from women who are about to deliver. It’s not just a typical scream. It’s a whole-body scream,” she said Friday, hours after she ran to peer down at an SUV parked hastily in front of Mount Sinai Medical Center. A distraught man circled the vehicle, looking for help, and a very pregnant woman lay across the front seat, howling.

Click here to read the rest of this story.