User talk:Mpenner

Just wondering why we are not yet collecting stats on Smoking History considering that smoking is (in my opinion) the most contributing factor in the healthy outcome of our patients. If we collect stats on Obesity, we should find a way to collect "Smoking History". Suggestions might be:

• Smokes more than a pkg/day
• Smoked within the past 5 years
• Ever Smoked
• Regular exposure to Smoke, either in a work environment, or smoking family member.

• Two things... we collect info we have concrete plans to use. If we don't have a specific report or inquiry about it, we don't collect it. Second, I suspect it would be hard to come up with a set of options that would be consistently collectable, i.e. the chart always tells enough to know which category to choose. Make the categories too narrow, not collectable, make them too broad, meaningless. if someone wants to do a study that requires this information we could negotiate a temporary study entry for it; I don't think anyone has asked. Will put the question to Julie as well to see if she has a comment. Ttenbergen 15:20, 2015 April 15 (CDT)
  • Hi Marla. Thank for putting a question out here!! Good work. As you know, we already collect alot of DX information and have continued challenges reighning in consistency of what we currently collect. We have for quite sometime now, not added a additional collection item unless it will be used for a specific purpose/project (as Tina states above). We are not an all inclusive database however, program is alway open to supporting projects that have purpose and that the info will be used. It can alway be a special short or long term project if someone requests it and it is an approved addition by our Database Steering Committee.

I will be away on vacation from June 5- June14. --mvpenner 11:00, 2015 May 28 (CDT)