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More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

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Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#11
post #8

In some countries in Europe, if you have private insurance they'll pull off the "call charge" trick as often as they can. Need to make or reschedule an appointment? Make a call. Did some blood test and need the results? Call to get them. They call you to tell you they can't make the appointment and need to reschedule? You still get charged. If it's not a call it's a fake shot. Fake disinfection charge. And so on. The…

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Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#14
post #4

Here's American health care: • I needed refills for two prescriptions that I've been taking for years. This time, for opaque reasons, I needed to talk to a doctor first. • Fine, but I couldn't accommodate an in-person check-in. I chose a "video visit" that, due to logistics, I had to do while away from home. Because they were a half-hour late, I was effectively forced to do this from the couch of a Costco floor displ…

My doctor's office pushes really hard for me to set up a physical if I haven't been in recently and need prescription refills. This includes for allergy and asthma medication, which I have used as-needed since I was a child. This started happening around a decade ago; before that, it was never a problem to have the pharmacy call the doctor's office for the refills, and that was that.

Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#15
post #4

Here's American health care: • I needed refills for two prescriptions that I've been taking for years. This time, for opaque reasons, I needed to talk to a doctor first. • Fine, but I couldn't accommodate an in-person check-in. I chose a "video visit" that, due to logistics, I had to do while away from home. Because they were a half-hour late, I was effectively forced to do this from the couch of a Costco floor displ…

A danish perspective: Primary care doctors are paid (by the state) based of a fixed list. A 15 min video consultation pays 162.99 DKK (~24 USD)

[1]: https://laeger.dk/media/mjpbsm2a/honorartabel-2023-januar.pd...

Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#16

Getting a doctor to respond through our digital messaging platform is practically impossible. Unless you're extremely persistent and specifically ask for the doctor's input (and send 3-4 messages back and forth with the nurse, whose responses are less relevant than a google search), it's impossible. I wonder if charging for these messages will make doctors more likely to respond. I wouldn't mind a modest copay for th…

> I wonder if charging for these messages will make doctors more likely to respond. I wouldn't mind a modest copay for these.

How long until administration figures out that they can juice revenue by shitting up the emails to increase back-and-forth traffic?

Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#17
post #9

I worked for a mature healthcare company and much of our marketing centered around healthcare provider surveys of doctors and nurses. The results were unsettling. Extremely high rates of burnout, typically due to administrative overhead. Horrifying medical error rates. Doctors should be compensated for the amount of time to send an email. Every other industry is capable of restructuring support to satisfy demand. It'…

>The real question is: what would it take for the healthcare industry to restructure itself to actually function?

Strike the words "over 65" from the medicare bill.

Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#18
Every time the topic gets of healthcare comes up I always wonder how many doctors have tried themselves to interact with their own clinic (has to be their own)

Trying to do simple things like:

- Setting or getting an appointment.

- Calling to sort out their office’s coding error that resulted in me getting an erroneous bill

- Trying to get access to their portal or getting results for tests transferred in a realiable manner to another doctor’s office.

I truly think that they would be mortified beyond words and wouldn’t believe their name is on the sign up front.

Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#19
> Dr. Lauren Oshman, a family physician and associate professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, says she initially experienced some patient resistance and anger about the prospect of being billed for emails.

> Now, she says, patients are typically pleased that they are able to get a direct response from her through a portal message.

> “They’re thrilled when they get me directly,” she says.

Geez, this could make corporate PR people blush.

Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

#20
post #4

Here's American health care: • I needed refills for two prescriptions that I've been taking for years. This time, for opaque reasons, I needed to talk to a doctor first. • Fine, but I couldn't accommodate an in-person check-in. I chose a "video visit" that, due to logistics, I had to do while away from home. Because they were a half-hour late, I was effectively forced to do this from the couch of a Costco floor displ…

Talk to me when you get a $4000 bill for 2 hours in ER where the actual doc saw you for 5 mins and then the nurses did band-aid and over the counter burn ointment. This with Insurance (biggest mafia). AMerican Healthcare system baby!!
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