Reform Your Own Health Care- Get Organized!

I don't mean politically organized... I mean literally, personally, getting organized for better health care! Now that we have health care reform legislation passed here in the United States, it's a great time to talk about this, whether you agree with the actual politics or not. (And please, let's refrain from discussing ALL THAT in the comments...) Here are a few strategies to make you healthier and less stressed:

• Medications and supplements: If you take a regular regimen of pills and capsules, it's not very efficient each morning to open every single bottle and think through the entire routine again. There are inexpensive organizing products available at any pharmacy or discount store that make it very easy to sort all of your pills for a week or more at a time, even if you take them three times a day! Choose a day (Sunday is good) and sort all of the pills into these containers for the week so you can just grab them and go. There are even purse-sized containers for those midday doses. Click here to watch the video I did for News 8 Austin on organizing medications a couple of years ago, which includes much more information. The checklist they mention was taken down, but you can click here to get it now instead.
• Those pesky insurance claims: If it's a regular task of yours, create a system for handling your medical claim filings. Suggested folders are: Forms, To File, Pending (for the ones you've filed and are waiting for payment), and Completed. Annually you can archive the completed filings to another location in your filing system by year, if you want to keep them. Please ask your attorney or accountant on matters of file retention for your personal situation.
• Your medical history information: There are so many ways to keep your health information organized-- on paper, online, or on your own computer's hard drive. You'll want to choose the system that works best for the way you normally work and think, and you'll also want to consider when and where you'll need the information.
• • For those who prefer paper, GetButtonedUp has Medical.doc, a very nice binder that organizes it all, and my friend Dorothy Breininger has the BioBinder Senior Organizer that includes legal and financial information for seniors as well.
  • For storing information online, Dorothy also offers the Delphi VIM- Vital Information Manager, which is a paperless way to store your important health and identification information online, so that it's secure and accessible from anywhere. I have a special savings code for this, by the way-- it's normally $96 per year, but if you use the code G0025-0011 (those are zeroes) you can get it for $60 instead. You can put LOTS of information on there for all kinds of emergencies.
  • If you just want to keep a simple file on your own computer, you can open an Excel document and create columns for Date, Event, Reason, Doctor, Result, and Notes. You can make a separate worksheet for each family member with these same columns, and your whole family's information will be in one place. The key for any of these systems is to create a habit of inputting the information as it happens.

What challenges do you have with organizing your health care-related information and items? Share in the comments!

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Comments

[T Moose]

All great ideas! Thanks for sharing them.

[Michelle]

It's very hard to organize medical information for babies and toddlers. I'm also learning the hard way how important it is to keep immunization records if you want your child to go to school...easy if you have one pediatrician your child's life..hard if you moved around a lot.

[Michelle]

Oh yeah...it's also very important to regularly go through the huge collection of pills and get rid of everything expired, and make sure you remove labels off your RX bottles. I wish I knew a better way to store all this because now I have a basket of things we use regularly and need quickly for the young children (like thermometer, some grown up Tylenol, and all the infant drops we have) and keep it on the fridge (out of reach for the toddlers), but the rest I keep in plastic walmart drawers which worked out great before I had kids, but not so smart now. You just can't child proof or install any locks on plastic drawers.

[killross]

Thanks for the Tips, I would like to follow these instructions. I really hope that i can have a good self management