I'm Henry The VIII I Am

Henry VIII continues to be a fascinating case study and the focus of movies, books, songs (if you wonder about the title it comes from Herman's Hermits' Song of the Same name)


and recently ShowTime's series "The Tudors" which has certainly captured much of the intrigue if not all the historical accuracy. So what does this have to do with clinical documentation you may ask.

Henry VII is famous for his six wives but is also subject to substantial debate as to the cause of death. He died on 28 January 1547 after suffering through a bad fever. As was common at the time he was bled during his illness by the "physicians" of the day, and like so many cases this likely contributed to his death. But here we are 462 yeasr later and we continue to debate the cause of his death. There have been many suggested causes of his death:

• Syphilis
• Untreated type II diabetes
• Obesity
• Tuberculosis
• An infection coupled with breathing problems

and probably the most commonly held view is that Henry VIII died of syphilis. A position promoted some 100 years ago but currently thought to be inaccurate. But the list of possible causes of death today would be a lot shorter had the method of data capture been an EMR. Imagine Henry's physician documenting the case - he would be presented with a list possible causes of death as known in 1547:

Tudor EMRCause of Death:

• Consumption
• Smallpox
• Consumption with SmallPox
• Other

But Henry's medical record was one of the best medical records of his time and included the following information (from Trivia Library):

At 22 he contracted smallpox..At 33 he had his first attack of malaria...At 35, after a serious jousting accident, ...develop chronic migraine headaches and the extraordinarily painful leg ulcers which eventually crippled him...at44, Henry suffered his worst jousting accident and lay unconscious for two hours....fits of blind anger ..acute insomnia, painful sore throats, and recurrent, agonizing headaches. ....became prematurely gray and abnormally obese; in one four-year period his waist measurement increased by an astounding 17 in., ....At 45 he developed a strange growth on the side of his nose...At 49 he probably became sterile or impotent...at age 55, he could hardly walk ...increasingly absentminded, ...his last eight days in bed, too weak even to lift a glass to his lips

But recent review of the notes suggest she may well have died from complications of Type II Diabetes. And it was the narrative that helped current researchers to come to that conclusion.

So unless we believe we know everything we need to know about healthcare, symptoms, signs and diseases then collecting the narrative is imperative to capture the maximum amount of information both now and in the future. If we loose the narrative we will be loosing information. Identifying data elements is important but these two worlds can live in harmony in Clinical Document Architecture Format (CDA) in the Healthstory Project that preserves the narrative but adds additional data elements.

If you want to hear more come listen to the presentation:

Clinical Narrative and Structured Data in the EHR: Venus and Mars Live in Harmony with CDA4CDT on Wednesday Oct 7th @ 11:15 in the Grapevine Ballroom D, Gaylord Texan, at the AHIMA Convention in Grapevine Texas. Hope to see you there