Originally Posted by Boondoc
Originally Posted by dgrauman
use the portal or make an appointment. Like it or not, an e-mail address is now pretty much an assumption, like a phone number, and one is going to be seriously inconvenienced by refusal to get and use one. There has been amazingly little pushback, and a lot of positive reinforcement.

Are all appointments made through the portal, or can they still call the secretary for one? Do you ever call about labs anymore, or just communicate through the portal? I'm always looking for ways to improve efficiency. Getting the portal really 'going' seems like an old tractor that is hard to start. You have to keep pulling the starter, and if you let it alone without attention for a while, it starts to die out.

Very few appointments are allowed through the portal. We would get a lot of brief appointments being made to "just refill prescriptions" when actually an annual comprehensive exam is needed. Pretty much I never call patients on the phone except for exceptional issues. It is just an invitation to 1) eternal phone tag, and 2) getting suckered into providing what would be an office visit over the phone. If it can't be handled by a simple one-way message, it deserves an appointment. If we had been smart enough to insist on getting reimbursed for billable hours, like the lawyers, I'd be a lot more willing to do things by remote control. But, as it isn't, it ain't.

David Grauman MD
Department of Medicine
Commonwealth Health Center
Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands