June 27, 2011--VIN

VIN is not vin. Not French for wine but for Vehicle Identification Number. Every car has one as every Frenchman has un cave stocked with du vin.

I thought about this Thursday night in the Delray Beach Hospital ER.

We were there to have Rona's left ankle X-rayed. She twisted it badly at the end of dinner at the Silver Pond Restaurant, our favorite Florida place for Chinese food close by my mother's. We had just finished salt-baked shrimp, pi pa bean curd, and . . .

But why am I focusing on the food? This is supposed to be about our ER experience. Avoidance I suppose.

Though it turned out to be a good story.

She has "just" a severe strain, not the torn ligaments and/or broken bones that all the swelling and discoloration of her foot had us fearing.

And it's a great ER. Spacious, immaculate and well-run with a responsive and expert staff.

And they are fully computerized.

Unfortunately we aren't. Computerized, I mean.

Nor are most Americans. There is no national medical-records database where Rona's information is stored and can be called up as quickly as one can find out about fireflies via Google (as we did the other day since our place in Maine is currently illuminated by them). Or how via the Internet in a millisecond you can learn about Michele Bachmann's 23 foster children or who the president was in 1907, the year my mother was born (Teddy Roosevelt); but it took a full half hour for the Delray folks to find out about Rona's allergies (only to Amoxicillin), the name of her internist, her history of operations (fortunately, none), and of course what medical insurance we have.

I know that Obama's health care bill calls for the development of such a database, mainly as a cost-savings measure. But from our recent experience, if it existed, it would also have enhanced the quality of medical care. What happens to someone brought to the ER while intoxicated who can't tell anyone what he is allergic to or to someone too old to recall all the meds she uses?

Of course, if Rona had been alone and unconscious, they would have treated her immediately But still they would know nothing about her underlying conditions (fortunately, very few). Crucial information would have been missing that might have put her life at risk.

On the other hand, while in Maine recently, we needed to replace one of the taillights on our car. We took it to the VW folks and they popped a new one right in. But first, to see exactly what part was needed, they entered the car's VIN number in the computer and in less than a second out poured more information about our car than anyone could have thought existed. Every single one of the parts and special features were listed and printed out--from the fact that we have satellite radio (this of course we knew) to information about our fog lights, which we didn't know we have and are very useful on many misty mornings along the coast of Maine.

Why, I wondered the other night as the ER tech asked Rona about her family's medical history, do we at the click of a mouse have all this information available about our cars but not about our people?

I couldn't help but conclude that this revealed more than I was wanting to contemplate about our mixed-up priorities.