SATURDAY, July 28, 2001 (HealthDayNews) -- Instead of thumbing through a tattered magazine or watching TV while you wait in a hospital emergency room, you may soon be able to use a computer program that helps identify your personal health risks.
Dr. Karin Rhodes of the University of Chicago has developed a program that asks a series of questions to pinpoint potential threats to your health. They include everything from smoking and alcohol abuse to sexually transmitted diseases, depression and domestic violence.
More than 100 million Americans visit hospital emergency departments each year, and those visits could offer a way to deliver important preventative health messages, says Rhodes, who has been an emergency physician for 16 years.
"I see a lot of patients with a lot of behavioral health risks, and I was particularly interested in screening for domestic violence, substance abuse, depression -- things that patients aren't so likely to bring up but might affect their long-term health."
Rhodes' computer health assessment could be particularly valuable for people who have no regular source of health care. She's still fine-tuning the software, and the program should be available to hospitals in about six to nine months, she says.
The program begins by collecting personal information, like age, height and weight, and then asks a series of questions that you respond to by pressing "yes," "no," or "not sure" on a computer screen. The initial version of the program contains 80 questions and takes about 15 to 17 minutes to complete. Rhodes says she plans to cut back the number of questions.
When you're finished, the program assesses your answers and then gives you a printout that identifies your health risks and offers advice and information on how to protect yourself and where to seek help.
In a test-run of the program, 285 emergency-room patients took the survey. The study was published in a recent issue of the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.
"It's only what patients want to tell you, but we had very high rates of disclosure of very sensitive risks," Rhodes says.
For example, 35 percent of the patients revealed major risk factors for depression, and one-third said they were at risk of domestic violence.
The computer survey also provides a health summary for the emergency physician who treats the patient. It could also prompt the doctor to talk with the patient about some of the identified health issues.
Study co-author Dr. David S. Howes calls the computer program an efficient, accurate and low-cost way to do patient health screening.
"We know that with this computer intervention we can not only screen and identify health risk factors, but we can also do health promotion during the same visit," says Howes, an associate professor of clinical medicine (emergency medicine) at the University of Chicago.
During the test trial, the computer survey was a potential life-saver for one patient.
"We identified one person who was suicidal, who was coming for a completely different reason to the hospital, who otherwise may not have been identified," Howes says.
Most of the patients in the test, she adds, said that they enjoyed using the program and felt it helped them identify important health issues.
"Many patients reported significant interest in changing their behavior based on this intervention. So we think it's a very powerful tool," Howes says.
What To Do
For more about injury and illness prevention, check out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Prevention Guidelines Database.
And to evaluate access to emergency care through your health plan, visit the American College of Emergency Physicians.
