How To Keep Up With The Paperwork During A Health Crisis

Successfully managing your own health crisis requires detailed organization. On this post, you’ll learn tips to help you stay on top of it all.

If you know me, you know that I’m extremely Type-A. I thrive on Monday.com planning boards, Excel spreadsheets, and planners. So, when my health journey started, my brain needed to create a system to track all of the appointments, provider reports, bills, order scripts, EOB’s, and medication lists. 

Let’s dive into the three ways I organized my health information.

1. Utilizing an accordion binder. 

I purchased an accordion binder with tabs to organize all of my paper records. Keeping everything in one place meant that I always had what I needed for doctor appointments. To keep it orderly, I labeled the binder tabs as follows:

• Insurance Authorizations
  • It’s important to save all records from your insurance company. Each time I received a prior authorization via mail, I would add a note on the envelope outlining the date, purpose, and service facility. This helped me flip through the paperwork easily when I needed to refer back to it. For example, my insurance company mistakenly sent me a declination EOB for an MRI that they had pre-authorized. Having the pre-authorization on-hand allowed me to quickly reconcile the issue. You can click here to learn more ways to navigate insurance.
• Referrals, Lab Orders, and Imaging Scripts
  • I hated fumbling around for paperwork when I checked into appointments. Keeping referral documentation in a specific tab helped me quickly find what I needed. The referrals were placed in chronological order so that the most recent document was at the front of the section. 
• Results
  • This included both lab results and imaging disks. For the imaging, I added stickies to each disk. The stickies would note the date, service provider, and image type (i.e.: back, hip, etc.). I had a lot of imaging so keeping it tidy helped me provide nurses and technicians what they needed to download for review at each appointment. 
• Medication List
  • At my pharmacy, each prescription comes with a little card outlining the medication name, dosage, and frequency. I began collecting those and adding them to this section of my binder. During appointments when asked about the medications I was taking, I could pull out all of the cards and hand them to the nurse. This ensured accuracy and saved so much time. If your pharmacy doesn’t do the same thing, you could just get stickies or note cards and write out the medication name, dosage, and frequency for each. I preferred this method over having everything written out on a single document. It was easier to simply remove the card when I was no longer taking a medication rather than cross out medications over time on a sheet of paper.
• Bills and EOB’s
  • As bills and EOB’s came in, I started to collect them in the back of my binder. I’d paperclip them together accordingly and once paid, I’d mark both documents with “PAID: (DATE)”. This ensured that I was cross-checking each bill with my benefits. 

2. Saving online records as PDF’s. 

Most providers want to see or review notes from previous labs and diagnoses prior to an initial appointment. Since I was seeing so many specialists, it was easier to just handle the documentation myself (instead of calling all of my providers and requesting them to send my paperwork over). I began saving my records as PDF’s. I created a folder on my laptop called “Health 2021” and structured the sub-folders according to the issue, doctor, and report date. I’d update this after each appointment. Then, when asked for my records prior to a health appointment, I would compress the folder into a zip file and send to the doctor. I’ve outlined an example of the folder structure and naming framework below: 

• Parent Folder Name: Health 2021
  • Folder Name: Back
    • Folder Name: Dr. Name
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
    • Folder Name: Dr. Name
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
  • Folder Name: Hip
    • Folder Name: Dr. Name
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
    • Folder Name: Dr. Name
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
  • Folder Name: Lab Results
    • Folder Name: Dr. Name
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
    • Folder Name: Dr. Name
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date
      • Document Title: Dr. Name_Report Date

3. Keeping all appointments on a digital calendar. 

Whether it’s Outlook or Google, track your appointments in a place that you can get reminders and visually see when you’re scheduled. During a health crisis, it’s common to have multiple appointments in one day. Visualizing the length of time between appointments can help you gauge if you can actually make it to the next appointment in time. 

• Pro Tip: If you have to schedule multiple appointments in one day, I recommend scheduling them as far apart as possible. Even if your appointment is scheduled for 9 a.m., the provider might not be able to see you until 10:15 a.m. If you have another appointment scheduled for 11:30 a.m., you likely won’t have enough time to wrap up the first appointment and be on time for your next one (I once had a provider 2.5 hours late to the appointment). 

There are many ways to manage a health crisis. I’ve found that keeping myself organized through these three tactics minimized additional stress in the long-run. 

What has helped you manage your health crisis?