Your medical chart could include exercise minutes

Roll up a sleeve for the blood pressure cuff. Stick out a wrist for the pulse-taking. Lift your tongue for the thermometer. Report how many minutes you are active or getting exercise.

If the last item isn’t part of the usual drill at your doctor's office, a movement is afoot to change that. One recent national survey indicated only a third of Americans said their doctors asked about or prescribed physical activity.

Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health insurance plans, made a big push a few years ago to get its southern California doctors to ask patients about exercise. Since then, Kaiser has expanded the program across California and to several other states. Now almost 9 million patients are asked at every visit, and some other medical systems are doing it, too. …

My doc recently switched to electronic medical records. On my last visit, I was asked a bunch questions regarding race, who lives in my home, how much I drink, what do I drink, did I ever smoke, etc.
I asked if this info is required for my treatment, and they said ‘No, it’s for the computer.’

There is a guy at my gym who works out for two hours every day, and has done so for many years. He recently told me that he had just completed 460 consecutive days in a row.

I am trying to do this myself, but I only work out for 45 minutes.

My primary care and OBGYN both asked me about soda drinking, caffeine, alcohol drinking, smoking, and exercise on forms years ago.

I’ve talked about exercise with them for as long at annuals as I have visited them. It might be how/where/when they were trained and that exercise is getting more attention in medical schools and conferences.

That may be true.

But I suspect that the fed is driving this invasive questioning in order to build a more complete database of our private information.

And they may have begun years ago.

6,352,128 minutes so far for my lifetime. Some of that is not documented, though.

Tell me what the correct number should be, and I’ll try harder to report a number closer to the target.

“That may be true.

But I suspect that the fed is driving this invasive questioning in order to build a more complete database of our private information.

And they may have begun years ago.”
_________________________________________

Yes. Patients receiving MedicAid, Medicare and a host of other government grants and low cost/no cost health programs have a long list of questions to answer regarding tobacco and who lives in their home etc. and annually, the medical organization which provides care to them is required to submit extensive reports (not by patient name but by the number of patients who ‘met’ the government standard divided by the total number of patients the facility treated) on these factors (includes weight control). So in order to get the next year’s funds, the facility has to keep improving (i.e., more patients complying).
The documentation for this effort says that the gov is gathering information to see what treatments work, how health is best managed etc. but I am sure it’s primarily ‘keeping healthcare costs down’. A post on FR in the past month was quoting a physician who said with Obamacare, we would all have to answer these questions.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.