Get hard copies of your own medical records As you say, people are pretty mobile, and electronic records can have glitches.   Besides, you can easily learn to understand the basics, and track certain things that doctors are missing these days ... or someone in your family may develop an interest and be helpful later ... or another doctor may take a different view of your medical issues ... down the road.   Just variations in body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar ... can be a clue that there is exposure to BUTYL which I suspect is the cause of 'the syndromes' through this past century.   Look for the Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome pattern ... regardless of what service time .... you may dealing with autoimmune issues almost entirely.   The worst pesticide   *   I recently learned that even degenerative disc disease is most probably a more advanced autoimmune issue after fatigue and very high white blood cell counts show up http://www.valdezlink.com/re/abcdotcomblogs.htm#ddd 'Horrible anger rages' ... also a part of the central nervous system poisoning of the chemical I suspect for autoimmune issues and CFIDS, CFS, FM Periodontal Disease - Autoimmune! I would look into these for help http://www.valdezlink.com/pages/autoimmune.htm#help Loss of weight can be a liver issue. Too many things going on a the same time for doctors and researchers to find the harm of this chemical Avoid BUTYL * & all organic solvents, pesticides, neurotoxins, teratogens, poisons. 2-butoxyethanol is all of these Your family needs to avoid this chemical, too Exposure looks like 'the flu' or just 'sniffles' ... diarrhea ... The proof is the anemia not found by doctors ... but it can be   CFIDS Anemia is / clues abnormal BP, Blood sugar, Body Temp   Help? Good nutrition & ... glycobiology ... Such as glyconutrients   Gamma globulin Rituxan for AIHA? ... for cancers? "Gamma globulin may also be used to treat immunological diseases other than deficiencies. For example, in immunological thrombocytopenia purpura, the patient's antibodies attack his or her own platelets, interfering with the blood's ability to clot. Gamma globulin injections are useful in treating this condition, though the mechanism by which they work is not fully understood. The injections may cause the spleen to ignore signals to destroy the antibody-tagged platelets, or they may cause the malfunctioning gamma globulin to degrade at an increased rate. In any case, the extra gamma globulin counteracts the malfunctioning antibodies that attack platelets and allows the platelets to thrive." Help for autoimmune issues, fatigue, cancer? same link ... to pray for info shared on a web page with fun things, too   Teratogen effects of EGBE: I suspect Barack Obama, jr would have another set of grandparents and a mother alive TODAY had there been no exposure to this chemical in his maternal family line * Patrick Swayze * , Steve Jobs, Dr Ron Davis, Randy Pausch, Phd have one of the cancers this chemical causes . __________________ Look into BUTYL for CFIDS, CFS, FM & 'Military Syndromes' * An e-mail request to the CDC on Flu Symptoms Traces of blood in urine? * Diarrhea then Constipation? Seizures Fainting Dizziness *   Thoughts for Korean Vet, Charlie   Margaret Diann Senior Member

patriotfiles.com/forum/showthread.php?p=425358&posted=1#post425358

I have lived my whole life near a VA hospital and worked my whole working life in a civilian hospital that is right beside the VA one. The job I had gave me a pretty good perspective on the differences between the two. For years I avoided going to the VA hospital because of the crass indifference with which the treated their patients and supervised the medical students. People would come to our hospital begging us to not ever send them to Mountain Home VA, One of my friends, a nursing supervisor for years at Mountain Home said that it was OK to go there as long as you are conscious. During the past few years I have started going to the Primary Care, Psych and Dental Clinics regularly and the care has been good. But at the same time I have had a friend and a father in law as inpatients and they were lucky to get out alive. I witnessed lying, intimidation and apathy alongside others doing the very best they could. There are many good caring people working at Mountain Home but there are enough of the other kind to make it almost inevitable you will end up with one. Medical residents still prowl the halls at night looking for patients to do procedures on so that they can be checked off on them. They have always complained when they got to my hospital how tightly they were controlled and that they had better get their procedure checkoffs done while they were at Mountain Home.  1CAVCCO15MED

AP

WASHINGTON – Patients at Veterans Affairs health centers around the country were given incorrect doses of drugs, had needed treatments delayed and may have been exposed to other medical errors due to software glitches that showed faulty displays of their electronic health records.

The glitches, which began in August and lingered until last month, were not disclosed by the Veterans Affairs Department to patients even though they sometimes involved prolonged infusions of drugs such as heparin, which in excessive doses can be life-threatening, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

There is no evidence that any patient was harmed, even as the VA says it continues to review the situation. But the issue is more pressing as the federal government begins promoting universal use of electronic medical records. President George W. Bush has supported the effort and incoming President-elect Barack Obama has made it a top priority, part of an additional $50 billion a year in spending for health IT programs that he has proposed.

The goal of electronic medical records nationwide is to help avert millions of medical mistakes attributed in part to paper systems, such as poorly written prescriptions. But health care experts say the VA's problems illustrate the need for close monitoring.

Veterans groups were also harshly critical, saying the VA's secrecy created a false sense of security.

"It's very serious potentially," said Dr. Jeffrey A. Linder, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who has studied electronic health systems. "There's a lot of hype out there about electronic health records, that there is some unfettered good. It's a big piece of the puzzle, but they're not magic. There is also a potential for unintended consequences."

The VA's recent glitches involved medical data — vital signs, lab results, active meds — that sometimes popped up under another patient's name on the computer screen. Records also failed to clearly display a doctor's stop order for a treatment, leading to reported cases of unnecessary doses of intravenous drugs such as blood-thinning heparin.

In a statement late Tuesday, the VA said there were nine reported cases where patients at the VA medical centers in Milwaukee, Durham, N.C., and Marion, Ind., were given incorrect doses, six of them involving heparin drips that were given for up to 11 hours longer than necessary. The other cases involved infusions of either sodium chloride or dextrose mixtures that were prolonged for up to 15 hours past the doctor's prescribed deadline.

The VA noted that veterans with questions or concerns can request a copy of their medical record at any time, such as via the "My HealtheVet" online system at http://www.myhealth.va.gov.

In all, nearly one-third of the VA's 153 medical centers reported seeing some kind of glitch, although the VA said that number could be higher since some facilities may not have filed reports.

Stephen Warren, the VA's acting assistant secretary for information technology, said VA hospitals were able to minimize the consequences because they had several alternative systems in place for nurses to check on a patient's treatment. Alert doctors also reported glitches after noticing that a patient's record looked similar to a previous patient's.

Warren said the VA was confident that its doctors took the proper precautions to avoid any harm to their patients. But he added, "VA believes that veterans are active partners in their health care, and encourages patients to always follow up with their health care teams to ensure that their treatment options meet their understanding and their health care needs."

Veterans groups questioned the VA's decision to keep the problems quiet.

"This is disturbing on a number of levels because of what could have happened," said Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander Glen Gardner. "Being told that no patients were harmed still does not absolve the VA from its responsibility to forewarn patients that something is amiss. Trust is paramount in doctor-patient relationships, and nothing should ever be allowed to undermine that confidence."

According to interviews and the VA's internal memos, the glitches began after the VA distributed its annual software upgrade last August.

By early October, hospitals began reporting the troubling problems: When doctors pulled up electronic records of different patients within 10 minutes of each other to offer treatment advice, the medical information of the first patient sometimes displayed under the second person's name. In some records, a doctor's stop order for intravenous injections also failed to clearly display.

The VA issued several safety alerts to medical centers beginning Oct. 10. It also imposed new safety measures until the glitches were fully corrected in December.

"Patients can ... be at risk for delay in treatment changes or possible medication errors," according to one internal memo dated Oct. 31. "These changes have resulted in reported delays for stopping continuous infusion orders (e.g., stopping IV heparin drips)."

Dr. Bart Harmon, a former Pentagon chief medical information officer who helped coordinate the government's electronic records system from 1997 to 2007, cautioned that the VA's problems could become more common as more hospitals and doctors' offices move toward electronic records.

"This is a classic problem in health care — it's hard to get people to invest in prevention," said Harmon, who now works for Harris Healthcare Solutions, an information technology firm based in Melbourne, Fla. "The money tends to drift to obvious risks that are wrong. But safety checks are a new investment that needs to be maintained."