My wife has chronic back pain, and today had a first appointment to see a new doctor. They asked her to get there at 11 for an 11:15 appointment to fill out papers, which she did. As is to be expected the appointment did not occur at 11:15, but when she asked at noon how the doctor’s schedule was running, she was told, “It’s going to be a while yet.”
My wife said she didn’t care to wait any longer and would like to leave, and asked for copies of the papers she had filled out and given them. They had her and my SSNs, insurance info, copy of her driver’s license, records release, privacy statement, medical and medications history, etc. The receptionist said she would get the papers.
Instead of giving her the papers, another doctor came out, who asked my wife what the problem was. This doctor called my wife by her first name and “my dear” - not exactly what my wife wanted to hear after cooling her heels for 45 minutes. My wife simply said she didn’t care to initiate a treatment relationship with a practice that had so little respect for her time, and simply wanted her papers and she’d go. The doctor said she didn’t understand why my wife might want them and said she was available to treat her. After some give and take - and much “my dearing” which my wife considered quite condescending - she handed some paper to my wife, who left.
When she got to the car, she saw it was only one paper, and not all she had filled out. So she went back in, and after more of the same, the doctor handed her 2 more pieces of paper. At that point my wife said she wanted all of the papers. If they were proprietary forms, she’d be fine seeing them shred them in front of her, but if they didn’t do that or give them to her, she would call the cops. And she pulled out her cell phone - at which time the doctor reluctantly gave her the forms.
Now why the hell did that have to be so difficult? And yeah, her back still hurts.
Further, you don’t really want everyone in the world to have the right to obtain your medical records; that right is usually reserved to the people who are going to be providing you with treatment.
Honest, I’m not saying this to be dickish or anything, but I’d have retrieved my paperwork as well. You have no idea what they could do with them - collect fraudulent benefits (you hear it all the time on the news), steal her identity, whatever - the point is they were hers, and she was entitled to them back. Besides, why in the world would a Dr.'s office want paperwork of that nature on someone who wasn’t even going to be a patient anyway?
Instead of identify theft, she was more concerned about the privacy of health information she had disclosed, and didn’t want any possibility of them filing an insurance claim. We tend to feel pretty strongly about personal privacy, and often act in ways to protect those rights - even in some instances where we realize such action might be merely symbollic. And we have had so many problems with insurance and medical billing screw-ups, getting the papers or having them destroyed seemed a simple step to ensure no such hassles would result from this visit.
I am well aware that the vast majority of people are not as concerned about their personal privacy as we are. And you may certainly consider her request unreasonable. Posting this, I expected some people to do so. I just don’t understand why the doc wouldn’t just give her the papers or shred them, and just let her go.
Sounds to me like the doctor was planning on billing the insurance for the time anyway. I’m with your wife on this one. I would have insisted on having all of my information given back, too. i would go a step further and notify the insurance carrier about the doctor’s behaviour, so they could watch for fraud. It’s more common than you might think.
It’s probably a policy b/c who wants to deal with filing a whole long set of information papers every time someone comes in? If she changes her mind in a week, and goes back, that’s double the amount of work for them. You have any idea how many holes they’d have in their files if they gave information back to people all the time? No one wants to start a precedent wherein the more paranoid among us refuse to let their information remain in a medical office filing system.
I don’t have a lot of patience in general with people who are super-paranoid about their privacy for no apparent reason. Plenty of people have your information, that’s just the way it works these days, and to pretend like you have control over it is fooling yourself. There was a story in NYC a while ago about how an office dumped everyone’s patient folders right on the street, in a big box. Some former nurse came across them and was horrified. The point is, you can’t keep all your own medical folders at home and carry it back and forth to the office. Unless you have a specific reason not to trust that specific office, it seems stupid to me to waste your time and theirs on this issue.
So, in your mind, the convenience of the office trumps my wife’s expectation of privacy?
Especially the convenience of an office that has kept a patient waiting 45 minutes already without explanation or apology? I know there are many many medical offices that behave in such manner. I just choose not to do business with them.
Please do not conflate this with the other situations you describe. As of the moment my wife requested her papers back she had not begun any treatment relationship with any medical personnel at that office. I do not see how returning her forms would create “a hole” in their records. If she did choose to go back a week later, the burden would be solely on her to once again get there 15 minutes early and fill out the forms.
Among my least favorite phrases is when I ask a sincere question, and am simply told “Because it is policy.” I am regularly amazed that people are such fucking sheep that they happily accept such non-explanations without a hint as to the basis for that policy, an explanation why this is an appropriate application of that policy, or anything.
I have a hold of myself, perhaps you should check your own nest for issues? I have been in the position of having to deal with a doctor’s office filing fraudulent charges against my insurance, and there is no reason for that office to refuse to give the OP’s wife back her personal information. If it were a matter of record keeping, the doctor should have explained that rather than trickling out one page at a time. I don’t see why they would need any of her personal information (short of her name and DOB) for a file that she will never fill, as she is not, and obviously never will be a patient there.
I’d suggest that you take your own advice, but then I imagine your rectum might already have a stranglehold on your neck. :rolleyes:
ETA – in the military it is (or used to be) the policy that you did, in fact, keep all of your medical folders and carry them with you. I still have all of my father’s medical records – they were in a file that we haven’t destroyed yet. Oddly enough, I also have copies of my medical records from birth until about age 4 when we went from military doctors to civilian.
You are way out to lunch on this one, Nightrabbit, in my opinion. What possible good reason could the doctor’s office have for keeping that paperwork in the situation described by the OP? There is a large minority of doctors who fail to grasp that the patient is the fucking customer who pays the bills. I do not see them more than one time either.
I had a wonderful GP who retired abruptly. He sent all of his patients a letter saying that he was retiring and that all of his patient records were being sent to Dr. R in the same building. If any one wanted to see someone else, Dr. R’s office would send the records to them. I’m not going to go into the whole story but the guy was a complete shithead about sending my records to Dr. B who I wanted to see. I had to call the California Regulatory Board (don’t remember the exact name) and a newspaper reporter to get his lazy ass to comply. Dr. B’s office manager told me that she had never experienced another doc being such a dick about records.
It’s one thing to have a policy of holding on to records in a case such as the one described. It’s another thing to resist giving them back when the erstwhile patient asks for them back.
The Department of Defense. The Department of Energy. Credit Card Companies. One’s own trash can. The Department of Motor Vehicles.
All those places have been gold mines for ID thieves. Why would a Doc’s office be sacrosanct? ID thieves must know it’s a great source of the info they want.
There’s also the point that when a doctors’ office (or anyone else) fails to deliver the service they agreed to provide, you have a perfect right to make it clear that you are unhappy and will not do business with them. To me, this would certainly preclude indulging their record-keeping desires.
The situation described in the OP seems to have reached epidemic proportions - it’s become astonishing for a doctor to see you within 30 minutes of your appointed time.
The doctors were running 45 minutes late. They were obviously going to bump her up in the queue when she complained (at the expense of whoever had the 10:45 appointment who was probably still sitting there reading about Paris Hilton in People), and they had time for a doctor - not say the office manager or someone - to argue with her and patronize her rather than hand her the contents of her file and send her out the door. Wow.
This would have been my primary reason for asking for my paperwork back, with a healthy dose of keeping my info private as a secondary. I regularly decline to provide all the information requested, if it seems unnecessary and no one can give me a good reason why they need to have my phone number to buy a pair of shoes. If I won’t give out that, why would I leave all my health history with a business I had no intentions of ever patronizing?
“I refuse to use your services and I’m never coming back. Good riddance.”
“In that case, we’ll just keep everything someone would need to completely steal your identity or make you look complicit in insurance fraud. It’s our policy, you see. And our office policy is the law.”
Well, you sort of prove my point. You’ll never be able to “take back” your information from your CC company. Or the DMV. Hundreds of people have access to your info on a DAILY basis. Demanding it back, and causing a scene, at one private doctor’s office is going to do little for your chances of preventing fraud. To believe that it does is nicely self-serving, but hardly accurate.