More hospitals begin charging fees for MyChart messages (MRI, blood pressure, physician)
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I have My Chart for most of my physicians but I mostly get messages from their offices or the lab about test results. If I want to directly message the doctors I use the individual patient portal for each physician's office - it's a lot quicker to get results that way. However, my meds are usually refilled for the year at my annual check-up, so I don't have to worry about them anyway.
I use the regular portal for my GP, they did not have an app or my chart but they will b having it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bpollen
Your EOBs should be in your Medicare.gov account and your Medigap ins. co. site under your account. Mine are.
Except most doctors won't let you ask too many questions because your time is limited at the visit even though you have come 20 minutes early and waited 45 minutes past your appointment time.
Ok fine.. next medical appointment I am coming armed with every question I can possibly think of.
This isn't necessarily the doctors doing this. Doctors now belong to hospital systems where you can't even call the office for an appointment. Instead you call the hospital system and then they send a message to the doctors office who may call you or the hospital system will call you back. Gone are the family doctors who used to run everything from their office. Now it is timed visits and the doctor isn't allowed to go over that time. If a doctor doesn't belong then they don't have hospital privileges.
People should restrict their messaging to the minimum and not try to use the portal as a free doctor visit. I can see where doing otherwise would quickly get overwhelming for doctors.
Many insurance companies have a free nurse hotline number for people to call. The nurse can evaluate your symptoms and advise you over the counter meds or have you contact your doctor for a visit or even visit the emergency room if they feel it is necessary.
It's almost impossible to connect with doctor by telephone since Covid, that's why we use online messaging which only works sometimes. Doctors may not see those messages either.
My husband got sent for testing and was messaged results by testing people who are in same medical system as his doctor.
Doctor never got those results so husband sent the doctor the test results and doctor ordered husband RX treatment which needed monitoring by blood test.
A month went by and husband had not gotten blood test appointment so called doctor's office (couldn't get through) then messaged him....no reply. Finally a nurse called 2 weeks later and said they saw husbands message and said husband should have called again when he got no reply. Huh?
My annual appointment is coming up, and my doctor's office - which used to a nice, small, quaint, charming, friendly operation, but which recently went "corporate" - sent me a pre-registration form to complete via MyChart.
I tried, but it made no sense. It asked my reason for coming in. I entered "prescription renewal." The next question was how long I have had those symptoms: 1 day, 1 week, etc. Um... I HAVE no symptoms, but it wouldn't let me proceed without answering that question and expounding upon it.
Except most doctors won't let you ask too many questions because your time is limited at the visit even though you have come 20 minutes early and waited 45 minutes past your appointment time.
Maybe the person before you was asking 65 questions...
I've only used the my chart message system for one doctor when I needed a med (Omeprazole) changed. I was not happy with his reply which contained a line saying that the doctor had turned off the ability for me to reply which makes me now wonder if this was why. I don't get EOB's from medicare or my medigap company so would not know if they did charge for it. I ended up messaging my family doctor to be the one to write me a new script for generic nexium.
Physicians are spending an increasing amount of time reviewing online messages, but patient advocates worry new fees will deter people from reaching out at all.
Yes—they don’t want to get caught in a discussion and sometimes a different person will be reading the emails and not be familiar with a long chain and it takes more time
Something that was supposed to IMPROVE Dr./Patient communication has no become a bone of contention and a money maker —
Of course attorneys charge you per word just about so doctors are using the same pricing model I guess
Had conversation via patient portal about new RX site (Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs) which took while to get all 4 RX straight and to be mailed vs pickup in NYC (no can do from FL)
So far this new PCP we are using hasn’t done that/stopped a response
I used to be able to call my doctor's office and get a personal call back from him within an hour. I could phone him at home at any time (this was when my mother was in her final illness, as he was also her doctor; in fact, she was among his very first private patients). He even made house calls when she could no longer travel there. Back then, he and his partner owned the practice, so this was all his prerogative. Now it's gone under some big corporate hospital umbrella and is unrecognizable. He seems to be considering retiring.
I'm just glad he was there for her!
Last edited by otterhere; 12-19-2022 at 10:01 PM..
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