Friday, March 2, 2007

Black Box in the OR

Just thinking out loud, but I've had this idea running around my head for a while and I thought I'd share it.

We have flight recorders in airplanes. Cameras in taxis. Buses and trucks have trip recorders. Casinos have video cameras. *Everywhere*.

So why don't we have a record of the operating room? Why are we subjected to handwritten medical notes and charts?

Why oh why can't we have casino-style cameras, one in each operating room? That way, when there's a problem we have a record of the incident to review objectively. Heck, I can imagine a business model selling the video to the patient, I know I'd pay a hundred bucks to see what happened while I was under.

Dump the video after a year or something if needed, but is it really such a weird idea?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes! What a great idea.

Jaz said...

Massachusetts Medical Law Report: “It says to me that if you don’t trust your doctor, you really ought to find another one,” he says. “If a patient is videotaping for purposes of trying to find mistakes for malpractice, then why go under surgery at all and take that risk?”

Lang adds that the only reason to have the technical aspect of amedical procedure on tape would be for the patient to sue the
doctor.

“I don’t think that’s the right idea to be conveying,” he says. “Either way you look at it, it
makes the doctor the patient’s adversary, or it makes the patient the doctor’s adversary. ”

--

So when I fly and I require a black box in the cockpit, I'm being adversarial to the pilot? Or if I take a Greyhound bus with a trip recorder I'm being adversarial to the driver?

Audio video records are no more complete accounts than written documentation is, but there's no reason whatsoever it can't be another part of the clinical record.

crankyalien said...

Maybe I'm a sick bastard, but I'd have paid good money for a video of them slicing me up. And I know a few people who really wanted to see the fist-sized lump of hell they took out of me. But they're sick bastards.

Disclosures and Disclaimers

Disclosures

My employer is compensated through funding to provide analytical research, technology solutions, and Web-based public and private health care performance reports by the State of New York, the State of Illinois, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Commonwealth Fund and Bridges to Excellence. I am not being compensated by any of these organisations to create articles for or make edits to this Web site or any other medium; and all posts authored by me are as an individual and do not represent my employer or the agencies I work for.