SilverWedding wrote:Thank you, Green Tea. I don’t know why I don’t have any paperwork!! So, I signed into the cancer center’s patient portal - as of yesterday, nothing is entered. I think I’ll write down all those items you mentioned and call nurses in both oncology and radiation. Thank you. I dont even have bloodwork and was hoping I could track that CEA number you all use. I wonder why we have nothing while all of you have all kinds of details. Do you all just get that on paper automatically at visits, or is everyone on some kind of a patient portal to view it all?
I'm surprised that you are not seeing anything on the patient portal. According to a recent press release, the Christiana Hospital system is supposed to have a state of the art Electronic Medical Records System, for which they have apparently received an award:
https://electronichealthreporter.com/christiana-care-recognized-as-a-national-leader-in-health-care-technology/#more-17952If you are not receiving anything, then there may be different reasons for this.
First of all, if it is
your patient portal that you registered using your own social security number, then of course there won't be any info there about your husband, because they do not allow caregivers to access other patients' information. It would have to be your husband who applies for his own portal account , and he would be the one to access it.
Second, the test results you are referring to may have been generated
before your husband applied for a portal account, in which case there was nowhere to send the results at the time when the results became available.
Third, the results you are interested in may not have come from one of the Christiana labs or scan units. If your husband went to a private lab or a private clinic, or a different hospital for his tests, then these results would not automatically be uploaded into the Christiana master database. Christiana only promises to upload the results if they come from one of their own units, or their own doctors. I think your new doctor is a private one who is allowed to practice medicine and do surgeries at Christiana, but he has his offices elsewhere and is not a permanent member of the Christiana staff. Maybe this is part of the problem.
Fourth, on the requisition form, the doctor who requested the tests may not have explicity requested that an electronic copy be sent to the patient's portal. He may need to explicitly mention this in the box on the requisition form, and give your husband's Christiana Graham Cancer Center patient number otherwise the hospital may only send the results to the requesting doctor. And the requesting doctor may not even bother to give you a printed copy, but instead summarize the results over the telephone or have his nurse give you what she thinks are the most pertinent details. What you need, actually, is the full, signed report.
Fifth, there is another problem that sometimes arises. For some reports, there are different versions of the report required by different offices, for example, one version required by the Insurance company, another version required by the State Department of Health, and a more complete version for the hospital master database. The version posted on your portal may not be the one you want. It may not be a complete version. You may have to explicitly request the complete version not just the abridged version.
I'm pretty sure that you can get your husband's portal updated with all relevant prior lab and scan results, but it may be necessary that the request to do this come from the doctor(s) who originally requisitioned the tests. In my hospital, I can bring my lab reports from outside clinics and ask the hospital to scan the reports and put the results in my electronic file. I do this any time I get a special test done from some other lab.
Let us know how the nurses respond to your question. According to the Christiana website, your husband should already have been assigned a Nurse Navigator to provide support. Is this the nurse you are referring to?
"..You will be assigned a nurse navigator and a social-work team. This team will follow you during your entire course of treatment. The nurse navigator acts as the team leader and provides support, education and a comprehensive assessment..."
If so, your husband should take full advantage of this to get the support he needs. It seems to me that the Nurse Navigator should be able to explain how your husband can get his Portal updated with all of the relevant test results.
By the way, does your husband have the iPhone app for accessing his Christiana Healthcare records by phone?
https://appadvice.com/app/christiana-care-patient-portal/1446508191