Another Health Care Crisis: Doctors Who Don't Use Computerized Filing Systems Because of Cost

It's amazing that you can go to two different doctor offices in your hometown and find one who's state-of-the-art and another that's still quite archaic. Already back in the 80's and 90's, my first general practitioner was state-of-the-art in everything, including digital thermometers, digital blood pressure machines and having a computer right on the desk where he could look up all your medical records at will. Enter an unwanted change in medical insurance and a requirement to change doctors. And enter a new doctor's clinic where the blood pressure machine was an ancient wall-mounted non-digital contraption that wouldn't be able to tell your blood pressure reading down to an exact digit. Add to that a doctor carrying one thing that contained all my medical history: A simple file folder.

Of course, this perplexed yours truly right away with the assumption that all doctor offices were modernized and I not only changed insurance but somehow time-traveled thirty years back in time. But, no, this was at some point in the early 90's when most companies were at least using some digital products or computers. Going from a modernized clinic to an archaic one in the matter of a few months was disconcerting, yet I never made a peep negative about those wall-mounted blood pressure monitors or that my medical file was now a big (or small then) stack of papers. Consider me patient, or even forgiving. I thought at the time that perhaps the clinic would eventually upgrade in maybe a year or two.

To this day, I'm still looking at my watch...