The Inner Reach Health Information Gathering System (

PHYSICIANS
How Can Inner Reach Track Your Patients' Symptoms?

Remember when you used to have time to have a relationship with your patients?

The Inner Reach Health Information Gathering System (HiGS) is a Preventive Care Technology System which allows people to communicate with their physician in a manner that more closely resembles the physician's language.  Studies show: histories are even more important to identify potential risk for disease than a physical examination; conditions and diseases can be missed when adequate and essential history is omitted during a physical examination by a physician in a doctor office.¹ High-risk people are missed by their primary care physicians due to lack of genetic evaluation. ², ³

Gathering data is difficult since time is tight. Studies suggest, physicians using EHRs preferentially structure interviews around data-gathering demands rather than patients’ own narrated accounts. &sup4; Too many tasks and not enough time to do them all.

Doctors have always collected and known the importance of genetic, family, and personal histories.  Doctors gather histories through time-consuming interviews.  In order to properly diagnose and get patients to ‘buy into’ care and treatment for disease, patients have to convey their story – their history and doctors have to listen.  Patients are more apt to comply when they know the doctor knows all they want to tell them.  This is difficult.

Within the current healthcare system, there is not longer enough time or a comprehensive way for patients to tell their story. Doctors cannot do a lot of the real care they want or used to do.   It can be frustrating. 

Almost all information about patients is collected in superficial redundant forms or conveyed verbally, then written down or entered electronically by someone else - not the individual.  Frequently what is entered about patients needs to fit billable code boxes for payment or institutional requirements. 

Alterations can occur to accommodate this and also distortions because the story is incomplete, rushed, and interpreted by a physician or other healthcare professionals in a short-hand toward relevant facts.  Adapted, scattershot, and non-comprehensive, often it is not really the person’s story at all.  Crucial points and situations can get left out. HiGS can help.

HiGS provides a vehicle for people who do not have the medical training or expertise to convey what's what about themselves in a brief and comprehensive manner--saving the physician's time.

HiGS:

  • Allows more time for a relationship with your patients
  • Efficiency
  • Captures information beforehand
  • Provides health histories, symptoms, and situations at a glance
  • Assists in more efficient use of your precious time
  • Collects information that might take extensive time to identify
  • Collects information that otherwise might be missed or overlooked
  • Provides more information on which to base a diagnosis
  • Has a consistent look and structure
  • Provides consistent information from one physician to another
  • Patients determine what information they want to provide to their physicians

HiGS increases:

  • the likelihood of the capturing of symptoms
  • the likelihood of physicians seeing more patients in the course of a day.
  • the likelihood of patients’ buying into care and complying with treatment since patients know - you know what they want you to know – but quickly.

HiGS decreases:

  • the likelihood of misdiagnosis through comprehensive information collected by the patients themselves
  • the likelihood of people 'falling thorough the cracks' of the health care system

(Study reference sources: 1. Trends in Sudden Cardiovascular Death in Young Competitive Athletes After Implementation of a Preparticipation Screening Program.  Corrado, D. Et al;  JAMA. 2006;296:1593-1601.  2.  Paula W. Yoon, ScD, MPH et al; Can Family History Be Used as a Tool for Public Health and Preventive Medicine? Genetics in Medicine 2002; 4(4):304-310. 3.  Krowchuk DP. The preparticipation athletic examination: a closer look. Pediatric Annals 1997;26:37-49.  4. Makoul G, Curry RH, Tang PC. The use of electronic medical records: communication patterns in outpatient encounters. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2001;8:610-615.)