Aging Well looks at challenges primary care physicians face when coordinating elders’ care with other physicians who also treat the patient. John Bruza, MD, an associate professor of Geriatric Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine, says that at Penn all of the health network’s subspecialties use the same EHR system. This has made the management of some highly complex patients much easier. “It facilitates almost instantaneous communication with providers,” says Bruza. In fact, that kind of coordination works so well among complex patients—those seeing multiple doctors on a regular basis—that Bruza says he may encourage certain patients to reconsider an outside specialist they’re seeing in order to try to keep everything within the same health system or network. “That’s not something I’d recommend for the majority of my patients but for those that are quite complex, I might suggest they consider it,” he says.
Aging Well article