I still remember the difficulty of piecing together the medical histories and treatment plans of Hurricane Katrina victims back in 2005.
After our experience with Katrina victims, we understand the need for people to add a simple, one-page form to their evacuation kit. It’s just as important as water, flashlights and extra batteries. — Thomas Feeley, MD, on KevinMD.com
Hopefully, most of us will never need to experience an evacuation. But all of us should have key medical information — our medications, our doctors, our insurance, our immunizations, our medical history — at our fingertips. And fortunately, I've recently seen some helpful tips on just how to do that.
Seth Godin has created a simple form to fill out.
Lisa Bonchek Adams, who is dealing with metastatic breast cancer, writes about the must-have medical binder. This focuses on cancer patients, but it will also provide good ideas for anyone, especially those with complex medical issues.
If you'd prefer to just buy a binder that's already set up, and start filling in the information, you could consider the one from My Medical Matters.
And Jacki Hollywood Brown reminds us that we need similar information for our pets; she writes about organizing horse health records.
Related Post:
Medical Records at Your Fingertips
Excellent resources, Jeri. Most people don't realize how important these records are.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting about this Jeri. After reading Seth Godin's blog entry last week, I created medical info pages for each of our family members and requested our parents and my sister do the same. We are sharing the sheets so there is always a family member who has access to this basic info. My sons are 18 and I feel better about sending them to college with a basic medical history and info they can share with future physicians.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on doing that, Andrea!
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