role of excel in cutting costs in health care delivery

**preventhospitalvisit** · 03-27-2012, 12:28 PM

Respected members,
I am a primary care paediatrician from Vellore, south India, with the main objective of reducing health care costs by eliminating hospital visits. First hospital visit at present is difficult to eliminate, but, second visit for the same illness with in first 10 days can be avoided if parents are educated about childs illness.This can be done only by collecting and giving numerous, appropriate information for each illness. for example if it is cold, we need not jump and give antibiotics. If the running nose is present for 10 days, if there is nasal tip redness, if there is ear pain or high grade fever, then it is a indication for antibiotics. This process has to be repeated for each child and in India with a large population each paediatrician is forced to see more than 60 to 110 children per day.My aim is to capture them in a excel sheet so that the parents are educated. Website azhagi.com has given us link excel with our local languages.
2.
Next step is to explain these finer points in a graphical form. For example in the middle of the night if the child cries with ear pain, there is no point in putting ear drops. There is a small pipe, Eustachian tube, connecting the ear with throat, which gets blocked during cold causing pain. If nasal drops are instilled into the nostril, the block will get cleared and pain will be relived. But parents wonder how nose drops will work for ear pain!!!. Graphics will help them
3.
Diseases are like plants. seeds are our genes. soil is our body. Seed in the soil will not become a plant unless some body waters it. similarly for diseases to occur, environment plays a crucial role. unless this is not tackled how it is possible eliminate illess? Environment has to be captured in a electronic medical software
4. Children do not live in isolation. your child;s illness can spread rapidly in the community. So a disease has to be treated not only at the individual level but at the community level. This will require additonal steps like informing district health officer
5. Lastly, pattern idenitification: Most doctors arrive at the diagnosis based on pattern recognition.
I want a electronic medical record which can help me with it.
I am working with databases for the past 22 years. My firm belief is excel is the ideal vehicle for developing a n electronic medical record.
I seek feed back on this issue.
with regards
arulalan

**Paul** · 03-27-2012, 12:58 PM

Hi Arulalan, welcome to the forum.

I would suggest you avoid using Excel for electronic medical records at all costs. It may even be illegal to do so, as Excel cannot adequately secure confidential data and would violate a number of laws here in the U.S. (I can't say for certain how it would apply to you in India, of course.)

If you aren't storing confidential patient data, just information about diseases and possibly counts of occurrences (and similar), then you may be OK. For that I would suggest putting together a workbook and then asking specific questions where you need assistance - each differing topic/issue in its own thread. While our volunteers go to great lengths to provide assistance, few would take on the endeavor of writing what amounts to a program to track your medical data.

**preventhospitalvisit** · 03-29-2012, 03:56 AM

dear paul,
thank you for valuble feed back. As alvin toffler noted in his 1990 book, Power shift , people with information will be valued in 21tst centuary. Thanks for providing such a crucial information. I am so attached to excel, I will continue to utilise for analysing inforamtion generated at community level. Our volunteers are working in 117 villages and they are generating many non confidential data for example: when the community overhead water tank was cleaned, how many people visit govermnent health center and so on. Again this also to prevent hospital visits.
Soon I will post my doubts
thanking you
yours faithfully
arulalan