Who are you?

I’m going to go all “naive” on you today. A long time ago, when computers and interconnectivity and such were going to make my life a dream, I was asked if I’d sign a paper agreeing to let my family physician share my medical information with other medical specialists. Sounded like a great idea. I go to the doctor complaining of a sore toe. My doctor thinks it’s more than a run-of-the-mill sore toe and sends the information to a “toe doctor”. The “toe doctor” makes a suggestion and Voila!, someone has a sore toe remedy. But that’s not the way it all shook down. Was it? Information sharing still seems to be a matter of me taking my information along with me when I head out for my appointment with the toe doctor. Seems there’s an issue with who has what kind of software and servers and connectivity and passwords and baud rates and megabytes and routers and sharing information of a personal nature and stuff and such. That whole “sharing” medical records idea was a dud. Lots of razzle-dazzle in the concept and phlattttt in the delivery.

I’ve gone for medical appointments with specialists and brought along my manilla envelope of the “visible” me. You know, the xrays, the MRIs, the patient profile, etc. I call it medical technology in a plain brown wrapper. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really care how the information gets from one physician to the next. I do care some Provinicial Ministry spent millions of dollars on the idea of information sharing being a great idea and obviously it wasn’t “millions well spent”. But, I may have misunderstood why I signed an information sharing document. My point is, and I do have one, any time I’ve had a medical appointment, the one teensy piece of technology that has always worked has been my little red and white Ontario Health Card. I could have an award- winning MRI or the most exotic case of diaplucous of the pluck (the details of which are handwritten in triplicate by my physician’s own hand) in my plain brown wrapper and I wouldn’t get past the reception desk, at any medical facility in Ontario, without presenting my little red and white health card. (Don’t even get me started on the dumb-arse “hospital cards”, whatever they were about has always been beyond my comprehension). As regards my red and white health card, I don’t know exactly what is on that little magnetic strip but, it seems to be all about me. It must be my name, my address, my telephone number, my next of kin and my insurance information. It is the get-past-the-receptionist card. It is all I have ever really needed to bring with me in an emergency or on a health-care visit. Are the new cards going to be any different? With exception of my photo being laminated onto the front and there being an expiry date, I’d say we’re talking “the same thing”. And, let’s not get me started with photo IDs. Cameras are not my friend. So, if the photo is key to the new green card service being a plus, well, I beg to differ. And, will I still have to drag a the plain brown envelope from one medical expert to the next? Will the receptionist still ask me if my name, address and next of kin are the same? You bet.

When the day comes and the Ministry of Identifying everyone in Ontario sends me a letter to tell me my red and white card is dysfunctional, will I have take time off work to get a new health card? You bet because, like any business, the Ontario Ministry of Identifying People is only open during regular business hours. And, when the day comes must I remember to bring my own version of me, the visible woman, (an approved photo ID and proof of Citizenship and Proof of Residency and Support Identity which clearly indicates I am a Citizen who lives in the residence of my proving, somewhere in Ontario) in order to get a new green health card? Yes. Will I have to make an appointment to get a new green health card? No, but if I want to get in and out by a specific time then, yes. And, finally, did the Ministry of Identifying People ever seriously consider creating one, all-encompassing, Identifying of People Card. I think they may have looked into it but, if they looked out that window in 2012, what would they do in 2013?

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca