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More doctors are charging fees to respond to patient messages

wsj.com

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

#221

Post by gnicholas »

derbOac wrote: post #211
CharlesW wrote: 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…

This is why I think US medicine should be deregulated, especially licensing laws. Everything you're describing is screaming monopoly and artificial lack of competition. If providers of class X are too busy to see you, then there's plenty of people who could, or you're just going to do it on your own. It needs to be more like that. Obviously there are some limits, but educational pathways could be much more diverse, a…

One easy step is to allow telemedicine visits across state lines.

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

#222

Post by unsupp0rted »

chadash wrote: post #6

I met with a new accountant yesterday. He told me that if I email him and ask if I can expense a lunch and it's a 1 minute answer, he's not gonna charge me. But if it's gonna take him a good amount of time to respond, then he will. And I think that this is completely fair. I'd expect the same from a doctor. If I am asking a very occasional and non-urgent question with a quick answer (e.g., can I take my medicine and…

You've painted a picture in which doctors charge for time. This is (or should be) incongruous with what a doctor is for.

Doctors charge for identifying and telling you things non-doctors can't, with a high degree of non-harm-doing.

They've already put in the 10,000 hours to know which bolt to turn.

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

#223

Post by burnished »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #213
pants2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is terrible advice.

It isn't advice

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

#224

Post by plagiarist »

polski-g wrote: post #95
smallmancontrov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Because we don't have death panels like in countries with government-run plans. Your insurance carrier won't deny you a bone marrow transplant because you're 85 (it costs over $1m). Other countries will deny it, because you're 85 and have had a good life. The UK's death panel is called NICE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Health_... We should have something similar in the US. 80% of all healthca…

I think it could be cool to have an evidence-based death panel of experts instead of our ad-hoc death panel of one guy (or one LLM!) running through a spreadsheet and clicking "no."

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

#225

Post by Gibbon1 »

bachmeier wrote: post #30
CharlesW wrote: 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…

Back in 2020, my son needed a Covid test for some event related to school. We called his doctor's office and made an appointment for the test. We showed up for the appointment, and we had to wait an extra 20 minutes because the doctor was late, only to be told "we don't do that testing". Then got a bill for $100 for a doctor's appointment.

I think we need to go back to having Nurse Practitioners at schools.

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

#226

Post by astraelraen »

I am a CPA with 20+ years of experience. I laugh at the lawyer/accountant/medical analogies, not because they aren't true, mostly for people who insinuate medical professionals should work for free or are obligated to work for free because medical is sacred?

I have no problem telling clients these days, if you don't want to pay me for my knowledge/skill/experience, I will go home and spend time with my family or doing something I enjoy. My time is not yours unless we both agree you will pay for it or I give it to you for free out of my own choice. You do not own my time and you do not own your medical professional's time either.

PS: To the person who said you can willingly go to the open market and find professional "X" somewhere in this thread. Good luck. CPAs, lawyers, any professional with experience is in such high demand its hilarious. We name our price and chose the clients we want to work with these days. I know people in my industry from a variety of locations across the US, same problem everywhere. If you don't want to pay for experience from any professional industry, go ask ChatGPT or spend half your day watching Tiktok or Youtube videos, good luck. Not saying it to be pompous, it's reality and has been for ~5 years.

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

#227

Post by throwaway2016a »

gnicholas wrote: post #132
throwaway2016a wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of if you feel they are worthless, IMO, the people who create them should not be asked to work for free. I've never found the notes from mine to be "worthless", you may want to find a new doctor. Also, your TFA is kind of unnecessarily vulgar (You do know what the F in TFA is for?) here seeing as it doesn't change the point of my original comment. I did, however, add the word "all" incase someone took my c…

> I've never found the notes from mine to be "worthless", you may want to find a new doctor. Thanks for the thought, but unfortunately our whole system (Stanford Health Care, FWIW) is like this. My doctor is better than my kids' doctor, and my wife's doctor. The incentives are just not there for them to engage, so mostly I get nurse messages that are useless. It appears to be a copy/paste from google (or some interna…

Maybe there would be an incentive for them to engage if they were getting paid for it... granted there would also need to be an incentive for them to not abuse it. But that's already an issue, for example: I had a dentist who would routinely recommend procedures I didn't need.

I know a few primary care doctors and they are all overworked and overbooked. I can't imagine any of them going above an beyond unfortunately (not because they don't want to but because they don't have the time). But most of the one's I know hate the system too.

I appreciate the clarification on tone. As a dev I read TFA in the same time as RTFM (as in: why didn't you read the article you moron?). But I get your usage as well.

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

#228

Post by [deleted] »

astraelraen wrote: post #226

I am a CPA with 20+ years of experience. I laugh at the lawyer/accountant/medical analogies, not because they aren't true, mostly for people who insinuate medical professionals should work for free or are obligated to work for free because medical is sacred? I have no problem telling clients these days, if you don't want to pay me for my knowledge/skill/experience, I will go home and spend time with my family or doin…

[deleted]

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

#229

Post by [deleted] »

chadash wrote: post #6

I met with a new accountant yesterday. He told me that if I email him and ask if I can expense a lunch and it's a 1 minute answer, he's not gonna charge me. But if it's gonna take him a good amount of time to respond, then he will. And I think that this is completely fair. I'd expect the same from a doctor. If I am asking a very occasional and non-urgent question with a quick answer (e.g., can I take my medicine and…

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by symlinkk »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #158
JTbane wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me old-fashioned but I really hate the idea of telemedicine.

Totally context dependent. Call me new-fashioned, but I don't want to spend a few hours of a workday several times per year to see a doctor for less than 5 minutes for prescription refill for a drug that I have been taking for years. Why in the world would either of us need to see each-other in person when he can ask me the same 3 questions he always does over the phone?

It sounds like you shouldn’t need to meet with him at all.
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