Patient Records at Mayo Clinic: Lessons Learned From the First 100 Patients in Dr Henry S. Plummer's Dossier Model

摘要

For more than a century, physicians at Mayo Clinic have been assigning "clinic numbers" to their patients and logging all data under each patient's unique number. The first patient enrolled in this system was assigned the number 1, followed by 2,3,4, and so on. To date, nearly 7 million clinic numbers have been assigned to as many patients at the Rochester, MN, site alone; the vast majority of their records are now available electronically. Physicians, medical students, and other allied health staff have access to these records, and consequently, this system for managing health care records has greatly enhanced and streamlined the care administered to patients. This patient record system has also greatly facilitated research, outcome tracking, and the transfer of care from one physician to another. At any time, a physician may access any other physician's notes from any department on any of their patients, a task made considerably easier by the adoption of the electronic medical record. Large groups ofpatient files that meet certain criteria can be retrieved for purposes of research, review, and discussion. The following are the results of an analysis of one such group, the first 100 patients enrolled in the medical records system at Mayo Clinic.