 |
| Google Images |
You may have noticed that when you
now visit a doctor’s office your prescription is sent electronically to the
pharmacy and the doctor enters notes into a tablet computer. I’ve found similar as I recently visited my
dentist (no paper file anymore) and my eye doctor.
And,
to be honest, I’ve heard a lot of griping about having to use such a system. Mostly having to do with the time needed to
accurately enter the information and select the proper procedure codes (to
guarantee payment) etc. Though, there
are benefits to having such records available electronically, especially to
easily see your history or share it as needed.
Well,
I recently read an article talking about some of the unintended consequences of
death certificates also moving to the digital age! I know that you were wondering when I would
get to genealogy and history research! Well,
as genealogists, death (and birth and marriage) records are very important
records! Future researchers will be
impacted by “what” death certificates look like in the future just as we are
affected by those we acquire for our research.
The
recent article starts out ...
Moving from paper death certificates to an online process called the Washington State
I’ve been so frustrated by the unintended consequences of a new state
governmental process for completing death certificates...
... All I needed to do was remove the discussion of the trauma from the
EDRS form and the computer program could allow it to be accepted.
This is clearly silly. Everyone knew that trauma played a role. In a paper world the medical examiner could
have just signed off on the death certificate and all would have been
fine. Now as an unintended consequence
of the inflexible nature of this EDRS program, it seems we just have to be
selective in our choices of contributing factors on the death certificate so
that families can bury their dead and the computer programmers can have the
answers they want. I had been told that
the new electronic form was to insure more accurate and complete death
certificates. It seems that the result
is that only answers the program likes are acceptable causes and contributing
factors to death...
What do you think? Will our
descendants get a less complete picture of how we died? Or is the level of
detail we are talking about just not significant?
Have you come across other “modern”
electronic forms whose restrictions have frustrated you with regards to
accurately and completely capturing information of interest to descendants?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright
© National Geneal ogical Society,
3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NGS
does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing
in this blog.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Republication
of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for
non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS .
Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article.
Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles
for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission
to [email protected].
All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the
copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Think
your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog
post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with
NGS posts or subscribe!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Suggestions for topics for future UpFront
with NGS posts are always
welcome. Please send any suggested topics to [email protected]
It does seem to me that it's not good to prevent the doctor from entering an accurate description. The systems looks like it has some problems in this area.
ReplyDeleteWe need to remember, though, that the death certificate is not created for the benefit of the family or genealogists. It records what the authorities think is required for their needs; it just happens to be useful to us, as well.
Dave (proud member of NGS, but that's not a profile option for posting comments)