Inside the American Medical System: Making a Medical Notebook III (Part 7 in the Series)

In the last two posts, I shared (here and here) about the forms that we used to make our medical records notebook. This notebook went with us everywhere, and I referred to it many times a day.

Every person's medical notebook will look different based on his circumstances. I am going to share the different sections of our medical notebook simply to give you ideas, not to dictate what a "perfect" medical notebook looks like! Feel free to use as much as is helpful to you!

Sections in Our Baby's Medical Notebook:

I. Baby's Information

• Copy of our insurance card
• Baby's birth information
• Information sheets for Mom and Dad
• Copy of baby's Social Security card
• Copy of our prenatal ultrasound report

II. Contact Information

• One sheet per physician or therapist, with all of that caregiver's contact information listed 
• A list of available Sonora Qwest labs, with contact information

III. Test Results

• Copies of results from all tests, including blood tests, MRI's, etc. 

IV. One section per physician. For us, this included....

• Pediatrician
• Developmental Pediatrician
• Geneticist
• Neurologist
• Chiropractor
• Cardiologist
• Ophthalmologist]
• Audiologist
• Gastroenterology
• Radiology
• Department of Disabilities
• Physical Therapy
• Occupational Therapy
• DSI Therapy
• Speech Therapy

In each of these folders, we placed:

• Communication pages (here)
• Doctor visit records (here)
• Lab results
• Doctors' reports
• Copies of prescriptions
• Everything else pertaining to that office or doctor 

After our medical notebook was set up, it was a cinch to keep it updated (though it did consume many hours per week, as some of you have experienced). However, having our records organized was an enormous blessing and sanity-saver.

In our next installment I'll share the two additional things that we did to organize our doctors' visits!

Click on Part 8 to keep reading!