Clinical information systems and healthcare patient portals are proving to be a significant waste of money. Millions of dollars are invested into developing and maintaining these platforms, often by third-party vendors, to provide patients with online access to their medical records. While the idea behind these portals is great in theory, the execution falls flat when healthcare providers continue to send massive amounts of paper copies through the mail, despite the digital system. This redundancy is both financially wasteful and environmentally harmful, especially when patients like me would prefer a paperless option.
Even more frustrating is that at my current health insurance company, I can’t even opt out of receiving paper copies. Despite several attempts to request this, I’m told there’s no way to stop the influx of mail. Now, I’m left with no choice but to purchase a $70 paper shredder just to deal with the overwhelming amount of unnecessary paperwork I receive. It feels like an outdated system where healthcare organizations are not fully committed to leveraging the digital tools they’ve invested in.
To make matters worse, the US Postal Service bears the burden of delivering all these unnecessary documents. This means taxpayers and other users of the postal system are indirectly subsidizing this inefficiency. It’s absurd that after all the time and money spent on developing patient portals, they’re not serving their purpose if the same information is just going to be mailed out anyway. It’s a huge missed opportunity for cost savings and sustainability.
For anyone curious about which platforms I’m talking about, my chart, Healow. These are the two that I have used. I’m sure there are many others, but Blue Cross is also part of the problem, they have their own custom proprietary software that you can log in and see your bill and all that stuff but they will still send you the crap in the mail. And cannot get them to stop
Blue Cross is also part of the problem
They’re probably your entire problem.
They were my previous insurer, and yeah, they sent letter after letter after letter after letter after letter after letter after letter after…
My current insurance? I get exactly zero letters in the mail about anything: it’s all digital through their portal and email.
I’m taking a stance against these platforms by always declining to ever create an account on them when the doctor’s office asks. Having medical data accessible like this is just asking for an attack, followed by a leak. And then I can only assume insurance companies buy these leaked databases and adjust rates accordingly.
I’m talking out of my ass, but your data is likely still there whether you choose to create an account or not; so you’re still susceptible to data breaches either way.
I like to hope that my data won’t be released to companies like mychart without my consent.
If the doctor uses mychart, thats where they store the internal data whether you have an account or not. Its their entire computer system most of the time.
released to companies like mychart
What does this mean? MyChart is a software solution used by many medical providers. They don’t “release” medical information to them.
This would be like thinking someone using Office on their computer is “releasing” documents they create to Microsoft.
I think you misunderstand. I have no issue with the platform, if the platform is a complete end-to-end replacement that consumers can use. But that’s not the case. They want you to use the platform, and they’re going to send you pounds of paper in the mail. I don’t want both. It should be either or! If I sign up for my chart, put everything in there. Send me emails. Why are you going to make me sign up for my chart, and now you’re going to send me a statement every single week or month? Wtf? I need both?
Imagine a single payer world where our medical information being shared had no monetary impact.
Yeah, people can do other malicious things, but there wouldn’t a financial incentive for the companies or agencies that have access to it.
So forcing everyone to use a single system, where everything about them can be known.
And we know how “secure” these systems aren’t.
Dont be naive.
Working in healthcare, let me tell you that it’s not just on your end. There needs to be a national standard for transmitting data. Getting faxes from other facilities and then having them scanned in is a fucking pain in the ass. It does not even attempt OCR. All your diagnostics will be done again. Patients tend to not know how to navigate the release of that information to the new facility half the time. So in those moments where that information is useful, it doesn’t get to the providers that need it.
It only works if it’s implemented, I still see regular scanned in records instead of linked records.
Yes but that is not due to a lack of standard for electronic communication.
Sometimes you have to deal with providers that do not have digital records, sometimes they are old medical records that were not digitized, sometimes the insurance companies do it on purpose to drag things out
I’m a developer at the biggest one of these systems in America. It is stupid expensive. But we support full electronic patient communication. And most of our competitors do too. I’m sorry you’re stuck with one of the few who doesn’t have that option or are choosing not to use it.
Hopefully they come around in the next decade!
To make matters worse, the US Postal Service bears the burden of delivering all these unnecessary documents. This means taxpayers and other users of the postal system are indirectly subsidizing this inefficiency.
The USPS is generally supported by stamp sales, not taxation.
I suppose one could argue that it is government-subsidized on the pension issue that’s been in the news in the past few years. If you feel – and I tend to agree that this is a valid concern – that as the USPS shrinks, it’s going to come up short on covering pensions and that at some point, people who have a USPS pension are going to be pushing for taxpayers to pay for it rather than the USPS defaulting on it, I think that that’s probably a valid concern. However, in that case, the financial problems are a result of the USPS shrinking, so generating artificial load probably doesn’t hurt.
Like, you’re paying for it, but it’d be via you paying higher fees to your healthcare provider, who then pays the USPS to send mail. It isn’t taxpayers.
Now, I’m left with no choice but to purchase a $70 paper shredder just to deal with the overwhelming amount of unnecessary paperwork I receive.
I mean, I think that in general, people should own and use a paper shredder. Most people get at least some sensitive documents, and it’s a good idea to make it hard to read physical documents before throwing them out. IIRC, case law is that once you throw out material, you don’t have an expectation of privacy covering it any more; this has come up in the past when police departments did warrantless searches through garbage.
kagis
Yeah:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Greenwood
California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.[1]
Even if you don’t care about police going through your garbage, anyone can go run off with your garbage and poke through it, and those people may or may not care about legalities anyway.
That being said, I agree that one should at least have the option to not receive documents that one does not want.
Blue Cross is also part of the problem
kagis
It sounds like Blue Cross isn’t unified, has different regional organizations, but it looks like at least some do have some level of paperless options:
