E-Patient Update: Don’t Give Patients Needless Paperwork

Recently, I had an initial appointment with a primary care practice. As I expected, I had a lot of paperwork to fill out, including not only routine administrative items like consent to bill my insurer and HIPAA policies, but also several pages of medical history. While nobody likes filling out forms, I have no problem with doing so, as I realize that these documents are very important to building a relationship with a medical practice. However, I was very annoyed by what happened later, when I was ushered back into the clinical suite. Despite my having filled out the extensive checklist of medical history items, I was asked every single one of the questions featured on the form verbally by a med tech who saw me ahead of my clinical appointment. And I mean Every. Single. One. I was polite and patient as I could be, particularly given that it wasn’t the poor tech’s fault, but I was simmering nonetheless, for a couple of reasons. First, on a practical level, it was infuriating to have filled out a long clinical interview form for what seemed to be absolutely no reason. This is in part because, as some readers may remember, I have Parkinson’s disease, and filling out forms can be difficult and even painful. But even if my writing hand was unimpaired I would’ve been rather irked by what seemed to be pointless duplication. Not only that, as it turns out the practice seems to have had access to my medication list — perhaps from claims data? — and could have sp...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare Healthcare Business Healthcare Communication HealthCare IT Patients e-Patient Medical Groups Medication Lists Patient Forms Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs