Why are doctors still stuck on fax machines?
The time for our health-care system to start using modern communication is long overdue, Kate Heartfield says.
As a family member of an older person with chronic health problems, sometimes I feel like a full-time switchboard operator frantically connecting all the various silos in the Ontario health care system.
It's a job I'm not suited for or skilled at, and many days, it leaves me with a pounding headache and tears of frustration. It wears on me, my spouse and the family members who help when they can. It takes time and energy away from working and parenting, and from our family relationship with the very person we're trying to help.
But what really gets me down is that it all seems so unnecessary. We're all willing to help our loved ones. I just don't see why the faulty communication in Ontario's health-care system is our problem to solve. There's no reason family members should have their lives steadily eroded by constant phone calls to tell Dr. X what Dr. Y said in the last appointment, or make sure that Specialist 1 got a report from Specialist 2. And I shudder to think what happens to the people who have no family willing or able to step into that switchboard role.
If it were about privacy, or authority in making decisions, that would be understandable. But it seldom is. What usually happens is a literal, simple, failure to communicate.
I called one specialist half a dozen times recently to follow up on the fact that another specialist never received a time-sensitive referral — by fax, naturally, because in
2021 it makes total sense that these things should be done by a technology that never worked reliably even when it was our only option.
“Well, we sent it!” “Well, we didn't get it!” Repeat.
At one point, I asked a receptionist, “Don't you deal with this other office all the time, as you're seeing the same patients? You seriously have no line of communication with them other than to tell me to keep badgering them to try faxing you again?”
“Oh,” she said, “We deal with a lot of referrers, and every one does things differently.”
If we don't call, nobody does. The followup just never happens.
A recent ER visit resulted in a report that never got sent to the GP, despite assurances it would. If we hadn't called to follow up days later, the GP would have had no idea about a change in medication or the tests the hospital did.
Yes, everything's a lot harder during the pandemic, I know. But this isn't new.
It's been this way for years, with different doctors. It's common for a requisition or prescription to turn into an elaborate who's-on-first routine between us, a doctor or dentist, the residence my relative lives in, and a lab or pharmacy.
I respect and admire all the doctors and the health care staff we interact with, and I know they're frustrated too. They're talented and compassionate people, and they're dealing with incredible added stress right now. The problem is that the system, if you can even call it that, is a mess. It's been 20 years since Ontario started trying to develop electronic health records, and here I am calling people to beg them to check the fax machine one more time so my loved one can access urgent treatments. It's ludicrous and shameful, and an indictment of every government that has fallen down on this task over the last two decades.
Several years ago, I said something about all this to her GP, who handed me a pamphlet about an organization meant to help family members. It made me want to weep that that was the answer. Frankly I've just never had the energy to call yet another part of the system, explain everything, bring in one more person. I don't want someone to help my spouse and me with this. I want “this” not to be a thing anymore. I want the different aspects of Ontario's health care system to just communicate, the way every other part of the modern world seems able to do. It is not our job, as family members, to relay information between health professionals. Our job is to love and support the people who need us.