A question of Demographics

[jinny m uppal <juppal01@cs.fiu.edu>]

Hello All,
This message is beign resent now that there are more members on the
list. Apologies to those who have alreay recieved this post.
------------------------------------------------------------

> Some of you might had a chance to meet Jinny Uppal at the Orlando
> meeting.  Jinny is completing her cs masters thesis at FIU and is
> blessed ;-) with the opportunity to have this thesis aligned with the
> HALFEM RFI.  She will facilitate some of the discussion on the list
> starting with the topics [patient demographics] and [relationships]. 
Thank you for the blessing Kent!  :-)

I have spent a fair amount of time trying to understand the HealthCare
system. Though I am far from being an expert, I have some views that I
would like to present. In the process, I hope to strengthen my
understanding of the system with the help of the collective expertise on
this list. :)
(In other words, dont hesitate to comment/suggest or simply shoot !)

So lets roll out the first one.......

Why dont we begin with Demographics, which pretty clearly is part of EM?
Where do you think the demographics information fits in the Patient's
record? As I understand, we would be interested in some
Demographic information for Persons who may not be Patients.
That includes Guarantors, NextOfKin, people who are in some contract with
the HCP. Does this list  include Physicians? Nurses?

Suppose we call these roles of a Person. Is demographics a property of a
Person or his/her role? In case of former, how do you determine the 
demographic properties, given knowedge of a particular role? For the
latter, we can foresee scenarios where roles of the same Person share
demographic properties.

Also while we chew this over, would anybody care to comment on what they
think is an Encounter? It would be a good idea to see where people stand
with the meaning of the word. Ofcourse, if this turns out to be a
heavy topic, we can move it to another thread!

Jinny.




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