The person answering this question must be a doctor or medical care provider.

Imagine that a patient comes in to your clinic or hospital. This may
or may not be an emergency. Now imagine that you have a stack pages or
folders of information that you need to know as a doctor. What page of
information would you prefer to be at the top of the stack? In other
words, what is most important for you to retrieve quickly and easily?
Please indicate your single (1) most important page of information
(what you would want at the top of the stack) from the list below.
Please choose and indicate this assuming that you don't know if it is
an emergency situation or not. I've been told that a majority of the
time the "account info" would be preferred at the top since it is used
most commonly and that if it were an emergency then it wouldn't take
much time to find the other important info.

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Clarification of Question by secretsquirrel13-ga on 04 Oct 2006 10:21 PDT

sorry! I forgot to add the list! here it is:

Patient account info
emergency contact info
insurance info
advance directives/dnr orders
problem list (health diagnoses)
medications list
immunizations list
allergies
vitals
labs/pathology
radiology
patients care plan
procedure list (surgeries, biopsies, etc)
patient discharge summaries and progress notes

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Request for Question Clarification by crabcakes-ga on 04 Oct 2006 15:49 PDT

I think the answer would be different for an emergency vs.
non-emergency. I've worked in the ER many, many times, and the very
first questions in an emergency situation are"
"What are the vitals" and "Does the patient have any allergies"

It's important to know respirations, pulse, temperature, to assist in
making a diagnosis. Allergies would be second, because you don't want
to take measures with a drug/treatment to which the patient has an
allergy.

Top of the list has got to be:

Who's going to pay?

Sorry, I'm not a doctor but I do know how they think.

I am not a doctor and do not even play one on television - but I would
have to say that it has to be Diagnosis...

My Rationale:
If it is an emergency, then seconds count.  Even if only 1 out of 20
cases is an emergency, doctors would still rather trade the extra time
for the other 19 cases for time with the one emergency.

Further, I think any doctors office will first ask you why you are
there, before they do anything else.  Hi - what can we do for you
today?  (which could be considered Diagnosis.   I thought about vitals
but without knowing why they are what they are- hes not breathing...
Well is it a heart attack or did he drown?

Probono is a probably cynic, but may be right.  I have the strong
suspicion that he is the type who chooses his doctor by the color of
her eyes or hair  -
as I would.  ;-)  

"problem list (health diagnoses)" and "medications list," maybe "allergies"
are probably the most important, but that is what tabbed file dividers
are for; the relevant pages can be found immediately.

If patient account info is on the top of the file, that is really
rather practical; it has to be updated and controlled independent of
the doctor's attention and for the efficiency of the staff.

Probono is being very cynical and anti-colonialist .

In Britain on entering hospital you do not pay for anything.(or on leaving either)

An emergency admission would not have anything accompanying them.

A routine admission would merely need to know which consultant and
ward they would be under.