Navigating Health Care Transitions: Tools for Information Sharing

At some point in our lives, most of us will face an illness where we have to deal with many different health care professionals—often spread out in different locations and settings across the health care system. Our primary physician may refer us to a specialist, or we may have an emergency that sends us to the ER and later requires that we be admitted to the hospital or see our primary physician for follow-up. We may even have to move from the hospital to a rehabilitation or long-term care facility.

A successful transition involves communicating and sharing all of the patient’s important health information including the diagnosis, symptoms, other health conditions, test results, treatment plans, medications, allergies, and even patient preferences. Unfortunately, much of this information is often confusing, missing, and even contradictory.

A number of the tools and resources that are available to help make this responsibility a little bit easier are highlighted in this article for the Alliance for Aging Research.

http://www.agingresearch.org/content/article/detail/2395/