You think that is bad. Try working with an attorney, they charge you to read your email and not respond at all.
More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
31–40 of 372 posts
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#32Here'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!!
My recent ER visit charged $5000 to walk in the door, without even accounting for any actual care.
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
American healthcare is the epitome of capitalism run amok. It’s terrible and the only thing worse than the exorbitant fees is the complete and utter lack of consideration to the patient’s time.
[flagged]
The American healthcare "system" is dysfunctional because parties who profit from the status quo keep the public bickering about inflammatory issues and distracted from making meaningful change. (My favorite example is "death panels".)
Since the American system doesn't allow people who can't pay for emergency care to die the system ends having a socialist component. Socialism is such a hot-button issue that we can't have mature conversation about funding it. Almost any conversation about it gets caught-up in partisan and "personal responsibility" bickering.
It would be easier if we just let people who can't pay die.
That's repugnant and wrong, but it would certainly make the conversation easier.
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
American healthcare is the epitome of capitalism run amok. It’s terrible and the only thing worse than the exorbitant fees is the complete and utter lack of consideration to the patient’s time.
[flagged]
How much time would you spend shopping around while you're bleeding out from a head wound? What would you use for negotiation leverage?
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#35Doctor-patient written communications (email, whatsapp whatever) can put doctors in legal risk whether they answer or not. Answering in a meaningful way also takes from the physician's time, much of it during their after-hours.
The clinic where I practice requires making a telephone number and email available to patients. A lot of patients might use them sensibly but some patients just abuse this.
If it were up to me, I would also put a cost on each form of communication as if it were a visit to the office!
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#36I think the ridiculous thing here is not the doctor charging but that all insurance doesn't cover it.
I bet there are a ton of consultants and lawyers (and maybe some accountants) on HN and most of them will charge you for time spent replying to emails.
Edit: inserted the word "all" before insurance to clarify my intent.
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#37Getting 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…
While waiting 6 weeks for an appointment with a specialist and suffering in pain, my mom diagnosed herself, created a treatment plan, ordered prescription pills from some Chinese site, and started treating her condition herself. She cancelled her appointment because she was feeling much better.
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
So why is our healthcare twice as expensive as the countries who actually do have socialized health care? When is that competition going to kick in and bring down costs? https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
Well, we don't have competition because the much-vaunted doctor's union blocked how many doctors we could have so that they could keep doctor pay up. And that's not me attributing purpose. That's them saying why they did it.
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#39Every time my lawyer replies to my email, it costs me $35. At least. That's just for one or two line responses. Anything that requires research or (gasp) looping in a partner gets a lot more expensive, very quickly. This doctor sounds like a good deal.
This is a pretty privileged perspective.
There's also quite a difference between the ethics of healthcare and legal services.
Most of the time if you need a legal answer from a lawyer who charges like that, it's because you know you'll net more money from having the answer than it will cost to get a reply.
With healthcare, you're not trying to make money you're just trying to live.
Re: More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages
#40Every 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…
Trust me, they are all aware of this. The problem is that, for the majority of doctors now, they do not own or control their clinics. They are either: 1)employees of the health system or 2)partners or employees of a provider's group that essentially contracts with the system to provide doctors. The doctors themselves have no real control over how their clinics operate outside of contractual negotiations.