Cleveland Clinic

Cleveland Clinic is a large private medical center located in the American city of Cleveland (Ohio).

History

2022: In the US, hospitals began to charge for doctors' responses to patient emails

As of November 17, 2022, the Cleveland Clinic, part of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, which operates several hospitals and medical centers in the United States, began charging fees for some of the emails its doctors send to patients. It is noted that this is a precedent for American health care.

Bills are issued to patients' insurance companies for messages that typically take more than five minutes to respond to and require medical examination by a doctor. These are, in particular, changes in the patient's treatment course, questions about new symptoms, requests to fill out medical forms and questions about changes in the patient's long-term condition.

In the US, hospitals began to charge for electronic responses of doctors

The cost of services will be from $3 to $8 for patients who are included in the national Medicare health insurance program in the United States. Patients with tariff plans that do not cover responses from doctors in electronic form may face costs ranging from $33 to $50.

The Cleveland Clinic uses a MyChart electronic medical record for its messaging system. There will be no billing for services such as appointment, renewal of prescriptions, health updates and questions about a problem the patient has been experiencing for the past seven days.

Charging doctors for answers will help the Cleveland Clinic improve its financial standing. The fact is that the US medical industry is in a difficult position. In a Physicians Foundation survey, about 86% of respondents said reimbursement for answering questions via email, text, or voice is an important tool to increase access to care and improve outcomes. However, PatientRightsAdvocate.org, a nonprofit that advocates for price transparency, calls the new practice "egregious."^[1]

Notes

Шаблон:Remarks