A few changes for health care

Briefly:

• Eliminate pagers (replacement value: $375) in favour of secure hospital-issued mobile phones.
  
• Move to electronic medical records integrating primary and hospital/specialist-based care. Family physicians don't need to be sent entire inpatient charts, but they need to have access to them when relevant. The reverse goes for hospital-based physicians and other health care workers.
  
• How about handheld devices instead of print-outs of patient lists? What is not lacking is the technology so much as the integration of technology.
  
• More long-term care beds and rehab facilities (community and hospital-based). Far too many patients waiting for ALC or rehab languish in acute care wards that do not provide an ideal environment for them. And it's wasteful.
  
• Centralize referrals/wait lists to expedite investigations and follow-up. Triage these to determine who is waiting and why.

These's more, of course, but these are just random thoughts that've come up on my elective in the past few weeks. It's probably a good idea to hire more nurses too.