As this pops up on the innernets, I will be cooling my heels in the waiting area at my doctor's nurse practitioner's office. It is a regular 6-month appointment, though I haven't been there for 10 months. Not my fault! I haven't been sick, and they have been renewing my prescriptions all willy-nilly without requiring me to come in. Probably has something to do with my insurance changing from high-dollar private to Medicare...
Anyhoo... the office called me a couple months ago, and said they wanted to schedule an appointment for me. Thinking my sweet, sweet live-saving meds might be cut off, I agreed. Then last week I got a reminder, in an email, with a link to confirm. Which I did, by going online to that MeChart thingy. Which wanted me to do a pre-check-in.
You know how that goes, right? You finally get into that dang MeChart, and it wants your updated insurance information. Which I dutifully typed in. THEN it wanted me to upload the front and back of my insurance card.
Sweet Gummi Mary! I am your employee??? You pay office personnel to do that! I typed in the requested information. But I stopped short of going all data-entry-clerk, and did not spend an hour trying to get a good enough phone picture of my card to try and figure out how to upload it. What in the NOT-HEAVEN? Are they trying to sell higher doses of blood pressure meds?
I will go back to my former procedure of arriving at the office 15 minutes early for my 8:15 appointment, to find that they do not open their office window until 8:15 or 8:30. At which time they will allow me to step up to that window, and hand them my insurance card, which they will copy, and type in the card information into my chart. I will then sign a confidentiality paper, and be allowed to sit 30 more minutes before being called in for a 5-minute visit with my doctor nurse practitioner. Who will suggest assorted shots, and various diagnostic tests, which I will decline. And then go upstairs to the lab to sit amongst sick people while waiting to give a blood sample.
Whatever happened to the old days, when the doctor made Mansion-calls with his little black bag, and accepted a chicken as payment?
I know all about the My Chart thing! I went to all the trouble of submitting all the required information and then was told by the receptionist to just ignore those check-in requests, because you will be answering the same questions in person!! Why? Who knows?
ReplyDeleteYou are so right! I am glad that I was (and still am) a great nurse in the 80's,90's 2000's! I would be fired now . . .
ReplyDeletePerhaps people started running out of chickens? Or the doctors got tired of going out to see one person and having the rest of the family chime in with their ailments as well. Very time consuming when you think back then some people had so many kids.
ReplyDeleteKathy,
ReplyDeleteThis MeChart revelation makes me suspect that it's corporate policy, passed down from the giant hospital systems who have taken over our rural hospitals and clinics. A way to harvest our information, and sell it to the highest bidder!
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Nursejoan,
Yes, you'd have to stop caring about patients, and blindly follow policies that you might want to question, or risk dismissal!
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River,
If the doctor had a lot of patients at one house, he should charge a PIG, not a chicken! Also, I imagine it was hard controlling his "payments" as he traveled to other houses.