Opinion: Health care has an ‘LMNO’ problem
On inpatient medical services, it’s common to hear patients’ laboratory results presented with statements sounding like “CALCE-MAG-FOSS were normal.” The efficiency of this reporting is part of the secret handshake of one insider communicating with another. Contraction of three serum ions resembles children learning the alphabet through song: A, B, C, D are sung as discrete letters, but eventually LMNO spills out all at once as if it were one of the English alphabet’s 23 letters. Singing “elemeno” isn’t a problem unless children actually believe it’s a single letter.
But often verbal constructions and other shortcuts are tightly linked with behaviors. Not only do some physicians report the results of serum calcium, magnesium, and phosphate simultaneously, they often order these tests together — a reflex where their behavior mirrors the contractions in their speech — even though there are many more reasons to check a calcium than a magnesium. The result here is needless tests and avoidable costs.
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