As he lay on the gurney, the anesthesiologist flipped through Morgan's medical records, which the surgeon would later need to operate successfully. The anesthesiologist placed the file on a nearby chair. Minutes later, Morgan was wheeled into the operating room, anesthesia filling his veins. The surgeon came in and, failing to find the records on the gurney, asked who had them. No one remembered where the records were except Morgan.
Medical records are the first thing a doctor turns to when a new patient is admitted for treatment.
But the records are often unavailable, or, during emergencies, there's not enough time to retrieve them. So doctors will fly blind, relying on sheer knowledge and experience rather than an understanding of the patient's history. Usually, this doesn't cause any harm, but for some patients, such as those with drug allergies, it can be fatal. Tracking doctors' procedures and patients' welfare consumes vast amounts of hospital resources, with back-office staff translating handwritten notes into databases on networks of workstations that process the information. According to one study, medical costs could be cut by 15 to 30 percent if doctors had adequate information when making decisions.