Medical Rant #2

They Don’t Talk to Each Other
We became acutely aware that each silo of Specialty Care provides excellent service BUT does not consider what other issues or conditions may be affecting the health and well-being of the patient, nor does that medical specialist communicate or share information with other medical staff involved to ensure the safety and well-being of the patient.
1. Our first indication of problems in communication was the phone call we received from our Internist in Lethbridge that they had a bed in the hospital in Lethbridge to prepare the patient for his angiogram at the Libin Institute in Calgary. We received that phone call in the FMC as we were waiting for the patient to recover from the angioplasty that he just had. The Internist was the doctor who had referred the patient in the first place. He did not know we were already admitted in Calgary for the procedure.
2. After the Cardiac Team decided on what procedure and timing they recommended the patient was transferred back to the Chinook Regional facility, we had the opportunity to see the aforementioned Internist who asked us what was going on. To me, that indicated that he had either not been sent the information or did not had an opportunity to update himself on the progress of the case.
3. When the patient visited his family doctor after a trip to Emergency at the Chinook Regional, the Family Doctor knew nothing about what treatment the patient had received. Again he had not been informed about any of the procedures or case plans for the patient. The only way he was aware of anything going on was a lab report from the hospital. With each admission, the patient provided information about the name of the family doctor.
4. There was a huge gap in providing the patient with information about where he needed to go for what.
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