ANA Discussion Forum
General Category => AN Issues => Topic started by: Kit W on November 18, 2008, 02:59:33 pm
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Does anyone know how I can get hold of copies of medical reports/records for my surgery and stay in hospital. I have no clue as to what type of operation was done to remove my AN or what drugs I was given post op/ICU. I know steroids and morphine were given but nothing else.
Plus I'd like to get hold of the records for my 2nd op to clean up the original scar site due to MRSA infection.
I thought the surgeon might provide me with some of this information but alas no. I even asked to see the scans that were done during my stay in hospital the first time but to no avail.
I see from reading through some of the posts here all of you know about your ANs in detail yet I do not. Only where it was approximately situated and approximately how large it was.
Kit
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You should be able to get copies of your records. I would suggest contacting the medical records department at the hospital. You'll have to sign a release of information and possibly pay a fee per page. To reduce the amount of paperwork to go through, you can specify what you want for example history and physical, operative report, physician progress notes, scans, labwork, discharge summary, etc. Hope this helps.
Sandra
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Kit:
HIPAA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requires health care providers, health plans, and health care clearinghouses to allow you access to your medical records.
In addition to HIPAA, about half the states have laws that allow patients or their designated representatives to access medical records. Laws usually allow health care facilities to charge a "reasonable" fee for copying records.
Always be polite and civil but firm in your request for your medical records with the knowledge that you're on solid legal ground.
Jim
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Jim,
Thank you for the information that will help me to find out what type of operation I had and what was done.
Regards
Kit
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Kit:
Specialists usually send reports back to your GP. I've found it much easier to get reports from my GP.
Rosemary
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Kit,
I obtained my surgical records by simply asking my surgeon's assistant for them. All they have to do is print them off of the computer or hospital data base. I wasn't charged for them but it may be different in your case.
Here is a transcription of part of my record for your review from an earlier post I made on '07. Just click on the link.
Paul
http://anausa.org/forum/index.php?topic=5342.msg48050#msg48050
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Kit,
I see that you had a MRSA infection. Is the MRSA present in your nasal passages? I contracted MRSA as well when I was in the hospital. It was detected from a nasal swab or throat culture. I carried it around with me for almost three years before my latest GP prescribed"Mupirocin", an antibiotic ointment that actually decolonized or killed it. I am Now MRSA free.
A friend of mine has an elderly father that was extremely ill and weak in the hospital for months. He contracted MRSA as well. Nothing was being done about it until I reported to my friend the experience I had with Mupirocin. She told the doctors about it. Evidently they listened to her, prescribed it and it worked!
There are different forms of MRSA. The form that I carried is the respiratory type that can cause a deadly form of pneumonia in persons with weakened immunity. In healthy persons in colonizes and lays dormant in the nares, waiting for the opportunity to strike. I was always healthy so it never got a foothold. Most people who carry it don't even know they have it.
Then there are other more deadly strains that effect a person if they are exposed to it through a cut or incision that require prolonged treatments via intravenously fed special antibiotics.
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Kit: I also obtained my medical records by just asking the assistant of my surgeon. I my case they were also free.
Paul: What are the symptoms of an MRSA infection? Why did your doctors decide to check on that?
I live in the Netherlands and the dutch hospital I need to go to to see my internist for my thyroid check-up has put up a sign telling people who have
been treated in a foreign hospital to inform them if the foreign hospital has problems with MRSA.
How do you find out if they do? Would I just call my (foreign) AN hospital (in my case House/St. Vincents were I had surgery) and bluntly ask them?
But which hospital would actually let the outside world know that they do have problems with MRSA ?
Any ideas?
Mathilda
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Mathilda,
I have no recollection of what prompted them to take a throat culture on me at that time. I was so intubated with catheters, IVs as well as constantly having blood drawn for analysis, it must have got lost in the wash. All I remember is them whisking me out of the room I was sharing and quarantining me in a private room with a great view of the Charles River that I could scarcely enjoy because I was so miserable.
As far as I'm concerned, I had no symptoms.
MRSA is running rampant these days. Most people who carry it don't even know they have it. From my experience, I'll go as far as saying that most doctors don't even seem to take it seriously enough to administer a test and prescribe the proper medication for it. I was told several times to "not worry about it"; that is, until I hooked-up with the GP I have now, who prescribed the proper drug, "Mupirocin" for me. I was incredulous when he said that it would decolonize it because of what everyone else had been telling me. It worked and that doctor won my trust and confidence.
I know of one elderly woman that died from a MSRA related infection in Florida. She had been treated for breast Cancer, had a mastectomy and had received chemo. She did well for a year and then began to deteriorate, evincing stroke-like symptoms. She was diagnosed with pneumonia and hospitalized. While in the hospital, it was determined that her pneumonia was in-fact MRSA-related. She slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness. I suspect that her age and chemo-induced, weakened condition conspired against her, giving the MRSA free reign. Where and when she picked-up the MRSA is hard to say.
Another person I know of is someone that I used to work with over ten years ago. I recently bumped into him at a local supermarket. I apprised him of what I'd been through over the past few years with my AN experience. He then began to tell me his tale of woe.
He said that while crawling about in his attic one day he received a very light cut on his kneeâ€â€light enough to not even require a band aid. Within a day or so the cut began festering and his knee and leg ballooned out, filling with fluid. He went to a hospital. At that point I said to him, "That sounds like MRSA!" He looked at me as if to say , "How did you know?" and I told him of my bout with it.
He went on to say that he had to receive IV administered treatments of special antibiotics for days-on-end to the stop the infection. That form of MRSA is different from the respiratory version that colonizes in the throat and nares.
I'm sure you've heard of that nasty "flesh-eating" strain of bacteria that was getting attention in the media over the past few years. That is another version of MRSA as well.
Hope this helps, Paul
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Read all about it......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRSA
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My husband works in health care and MRSA has been a problem for the last 10 years, not to mention several other super bugs. Ten to twelve years ago the hospitals in Ontario Canada had their own internal housekeeping staff. They were unionized and made a decent wage, but because of increasing cost of wages, benefits and pension plan the internal house keeping were "out sourced." Meaning an external company is now responsible for the cleaning of the hospital. These workers make a wage just above minimum standard, with no benefits or pension plan. They do not use the bacteria fighting cleaning supplies or clean to the extent the internal house keeping staff did. Scotland was one of the first countries to implement this system but after several years and many super bug outbreaks resulting in a lot of avoidable deaths, and law suites they have gone back to internal housing keeping.
Something to think about. Not everyone can be a Doctor or a nurses, your cleaning staff is very important to the health and well being of the patients and staff.
Anne marie