You know… there’s always one dissenter or devil’s advocate but it just really upsets me in this case that anyone could think that this was a good way to conduct health care.
I agree it might not be the fault of the doctor though, with automatic web portals set up for test results.
But wow… someone who actually believes it’s better to just give results online and make the patient call to talk about the results. That’s rotten.
Sorry, mon, that’s shitty. But I’ve got to say UW Hospital has always been excellent to deal with, and I’ve thrown some curveballs at them. The docs have been surprisingly personable under pressure. And very professional. It does seem like a glitch (but a glitch worth screaming/suing/throwing chairs about).
I’m assuming Medicine In The 21st Century will have a lot more of these kind of glitches…
I’d actually like to get the results like this if the alternative is being made to wait in misery for who knows how long until the receptionist can get the nurse or doctor to call you back or make an appointment for you to come in and discuss the results. I’m someone who tries to read meaning into whatever they say and wonder what horrible news they are trying to keep from me. Once I had to wait 2 days for someone to finally get back to me, and all the while I knew it was going to be trouble because they wouldn’t just say the results were normal.
“Thank you for calling our urgent care hotline. If you have a sucking chest wound, press ‘1’ now.”
“Your response indicates that blood is spurting out of a wound.”
“Press 1 if the blood flies through the air for more than one foot before hitting the ground.”
“Press 2 if the blood spurts six to twelve inches before hitting the ground.”
“Press 3 if the spurt is less than six inches.”
“Press 4 if you need extra time to find a ruler.”
USCDiver, I’m curious - what system are they using?
Yeah, probably a human error if the EMR system is all set up and working properly.
There’s a lot that aren’t.
My Doctor’s online system did this. Sent me test results at 11PM that indicated (according to Dr. Google) that it was highly unlikely I’d ever have my own children. I wrote my Doc a WTF? email, and slept very poorly. Woke up in the morning to an apology and a long email outlining what it meant and what we should do next.
She was horrified and had no idea the system was sending her patients test results before she even saw them.
I’m sorry to hear this, and my sister and I discussed the possibility that she saw the results before her doctor did. But neither of us considered that the doc might not be aware that this would happen, and be very unhappy about it. So I will suggest to her that she talk to the doc about this and if the doctor is equally displeased, maybe having an advocate on the inside will be helpful. If the doc is not displeased, perhaps it’s time to look for a new doc. Thanks for the idea.
EPIC
My sister’s program is called “MyChart”. Is that a component of EPIC?
Yeah, that’s usually the patient portal. EPIC encourages each hospital system to come up with a unique name for their particular system, such as HealthSpan. So then the patient portal might become MyHealthSpan. If she is also in Madison there’s a good chance she’s at one of the original sites and simply has MyChart.
Yea, EPIC headquarters is just outside of town.
A phone call is not a treatment.
If they have questions, they can call.
I rather have my results now, than wait another 3-7 days for the doctor to have time and make a personal phone call to me.
Sure, it’s impersonal and robotic - but it’s easier and faster.
I can’t believe you’re talking about patients asking questions as if it’s a bad thing.
Kaiser does the same thing with respect to online data. They have your medical history, test results, etc. on line. You can access your records about the same time your MD sees them. It’s not unforeseeable that you may know the results before your MD actually does. But, with Kaiser, you’ll get a call from your MD or his crew if additional care is required.
The coldness from that gave me the shivers. Yuck.
Best of luck to your sister.
My brother has a life threatening cancer and has been undergoing treatment since October. He, however, has been extremely happy with his medical care so far. His medicos have kept him well informed during each step in the process.
It does appear there might have been a glitch in this instance.
I’m not sure it’s a glitch as opposed to poor decision-making by administrators. In our local health care system, patient bloodwork results are released electronically in 3 days automatically, even if the doctor hasn’t signed off on it. The administrators don’t seem to understand why this is a problem.
This is a relatively new policy here. I’m not sure how long it’s going to last. On the other hand, I could see them start to release biopsy results the same way.
I have UW Health MyChart, and I just got an e-mail about the results from the thyroid panel I had taken Monday. I had an appointment with my endocrinologist on Wednesday and discussed the results with him, but they just now showed up on MyChart. I always assumed the doctor or nurse had to release the results to MyChart, but when I logged in to check the numbers, it says, “This test result has been released by an automatic process.”
I hope everything works out for your sister, and that someone listens when she explains how awful it was to find out that way. For a city with three major hospitals, all on the forefront of the electronic medical record revolution, health care in this city really doesn’t impress me.
I have experience with exactly this setup. University of California
I am being monitored for various conditions, and have blood work every 6 weeks.
I got a note from the RN who released the results stating that it was NOT automatic; someone had to specifically post the results to the patient-viewable database.
Then I got a “Wonderful News” broadcast from MyChart saying I could follow this link and set “my results” to post automatically (this was a few weeks ago). I of course, set that sucker to “yes, I want to see them”. There was no option for “normal” or “not normal, but not a problem” or “problem”. It was all results or no results.
I got the impression that, had I not set that flag, that the RN would still need to manually forward it.
Count me in as another person expecting the sister posting her status to FB.
However, I’d be lying if I said I was surprised. I absolutely agree that this is a telephone, person to person discussion, between patient and doctor, but this is happening less and less these days.
And she may have been better off by being able to get the results on the computer, instead of trying to understand and/or decipher a phone message from some of the people that call from the doctors office and the hospitals.
I tried paying a bill over the phone this week, and the woman I got on the other end of the phone had to be speaking through a pillow. When I had to ask her three times for her name and finally how to spell it, I would have preferred an on-line option.
I have had some great doctors in my life, but they are few and far between. My favorite doctor in the world moved to a different state, and I still send her happy holiday cards to let her know how much we miss her. 