Being on the other side of health care delivery is always an eye opening experience as to the progress we’ve made with technology and making it easy for our patients, and how far we have yet to go.
Now that I have more flexibility in my work schedule and we’re past the house move, I’m taking time to prioritize my own health. The newest health issue I’m addressing is cataracts in both eyes. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the ophthalmic practice in the area who my eye doctor referred me to has a patient portal link on their website. As I waited on the phone to make an appointment, I perused the website. I thought it was odd that the portal had the same name as my health system’s portal. When it was my turn to talk to someone, they told me my new address asking me to confirm it. I had just updated it with my health system on the patient portal last week. So I asked how they, a separate ophthalmic practice knew. They said the patient portal showed it based on my phone number. Turns out it is the very same portal as my health system. I asked if they were part of the system and they said no but they share the portal. Guessing there is more to the story – possibly an Epic Community Connect relationship?
We scheduled the initial consultation appointment at a location reasonably close at the end of November vs one at an even closer location at the end of January. But my positive response to this encounter quickly took a step backwards. As they described my next steps pre-appointment it included writing down two fax numbers. One to give my eye doctor so they could send a report from my last eye exam. And a different one to give my PCP so they could send a referral. When will healthcare finally retire fax machines??
The fact that I can remember my patient portal password means I’ve become a regular user. And that means I’m taking care of my health. Due to my injury in August, I have multiple ortho appointments and now weekly physical therapy visits.
I was late to my first physical therapy appointment due to mistakenly thinking the e-checkin on the portal would be quick. I had received a notice via email that I could do e-checkin before the visit. I assumed it was to answer a few questions around COVID-19. I logged on a few minutes before I was to leave the house. Turns out it was multiple screens asking me my medical history and insurance information. I thought this was possibly due to it being the first PT visit though it is within my health system and I had PT at that location a few years ago for a different issue. I couldn’t figure out how to skip screens to get to the end quickly so was late to the appointment. It wasn’t due to it being the first appointment. I had to go through all those screens again for the next appointment the following week. At least I’m getting more familiar with how to navigate it. A small plus is that when I got to the prescription and preferred pharmacy screen, I figured it was time to change pharmacies after our recent move. Using the zip code search I easily found the closest pharmacy to get my prescriptions at, clicked on it and updated my record.
My other recent health experience was at the endodontist. I’m seeing a root canal specialist who has treated me previously. Yet, when I got there for the appointment, I had to complete a two-sided paper form with all my medical history and insurance information starting from scratch. They should have been able to at least print out what they had in their record and ask me to confirm or update anything that had changed. If I had gone to the same practice location as in the past rather than the one closest to my new house, would they have made me start over??
I appreciate the increasing systemness, interoperability, and online capabilities as I navigate my current health issues and appointments. But making it all as easy as ordering a book on Amazon with one-click to go to right to my kindle reader it is not! And yes, healthcare is far more complex than an online book purchase, but we can do better.
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