Bill, Most doctors would not care about old addresses. Those that are epidemiologists, by training or interest, would. The Love Canal, in New York, is an example of discovering a public health menace by knowing current and prior patient locations.
Customarily, men do not undergo name changes. Women do. To obtain prior medical records for women, it is important to have all their last names, maiden & married. Supplying just one last name, a DOB and a SSN is often insufficient. Many practice management systems (PMS)cannot search by DOB or SSN. Even if the PMS has the capability, office staff frequently lack the initiative or creative thought to go beyond a last name search. Multiple last names help retrieve medical records that otherwise might have not been located. Bob Speth, Office Manager Nancy L Orchard, MD 470 Del Norte Avenue Yuba City CA 95991 530.674.4560 ----- Original Message ----- From: "William Stacy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 9:11 AM Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: Off Topic HIPAA Question > Steve Vellella wrote: > > > Bill, > > > > It tracks date/timestamp, what the user name is, and whether a record was added or > > just looked at, changed, or deleted. It also tracks a date/timestamp for any > > patient correspondence. > > > > My system also keeps a historical record of exams so that you can look at old > > address or different last names - but not detail of editing changes on a give > > record. > > Interesting. My database links the patient info table to the exam tables by unique > patient ID, so if the name is changed, it will show up with the new name even when > looking at old exams. Sounds like you are flat-filing exams. I could see maybe doing > that in a big archive file, but I think it might be a waste of storage space. It is > conceivable that I'd want to know what the patient's old name/address/phone was 5 years > ago, but I'm not sure why I would need that info. > > > The data auditing table has the potential to get pretty big, but with storage space > > being pretty inexpensive these days, it is not a big deal. > > Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I try to keep my database as tight and compact as I can. I > like being able to save my entire database to my keychain/pen drive. > > bill
