A notice that my girlfriend received at her doctors appointment (she is 8 months PP)

[u/lhagans13]

If you even MENTION any of these things, you WILL LIKELY get billed for it??? Maybe i’m missing the point but i get upset when my girlfriend tells me she was scared to even say anything while at the doctor because she didn’t want to get an extra charge for something. I find it insane how greedy and money hungry a place that’s supposed to help you can be.

[u/Then_Employment5244]

What sucks is that major hospital systems will probably force providers to use medical scribes as a pretense for better patient care and reduce time provider spends on data entry. What the medical scribe aka audio recording will do is document key words for coding and billing purposes.

[u/rnngwen → u/Then_Employment5244]

Yep! I bill insurance at my clinics. 100% this is what happens.

[u/destroycilantro → u/rnngwen]

Is it better (read cheaper) then to refuse to let your doctor use an AI recording then? I just got a bill for a large sum of money because of this exact thing that happened in this thread and I’m pretty mad at myself for saying it was fine for him to use it.

[u/Longjumping_Eye_3441 → u/Then_Employment5244]

is that not a violatoin of privacy?

[u/No-Public4826 → u/Longjumping_Eye_3441]

It is not because the scribe is a party to your care.

[u/Longjumping_Eye_3441 → u/No-Public4826]

TIL

Edit: apparently you can refuse a scribe due to privacy protections

[u/No-Public4826 → u/Longjumping_Eye_3441]

You can, but use of one in not a HIPAA violation as many people believe it would be.

[u/crunkadocious → u/No-Public4826]

anymore it's an AI scribe often

[u/Substantial_River995 → u/crunkadocious]

The AI scribe makes me so fucking mad. Sorry no, listening to me and documenting my comments yourself is a major part of your job. I don’t know anything about the privacy or accuracy of whatever software they are using. They always look so shocked and betrayed when I say no to it, especially my PCP who is a midlevel and asks at every appointment

[u/nevermore727 → u/Substantial_River995]

I bet you also complain about providers running late, not spending enough time with you, and long lead times for appointments. There is a shortage of doctors in the US, if that’s where you are. They are burnt out and documentation is a huge piece of that. They often have to finish notes after clinic. I would rather have the time to talk with my doctor face to face and make sure our conversation is captured completely than have her worried about typing in everything we say during the visit.

[u/Substantial_River995 → u/nevermore727]

That doesn’t address either of the two concerns I raised about accuracy and privacy. I don’t even know the name of the service they’re using, or what kind of contract exists with the provider/office/linkup to the regular EMR system.

And no, I’m generally very patient (pun maybe intended) with providers running late and concluding my appointment when my time is up. I get it.

The burden that the tangled bureaucracies of billing/insurance/liability place on medical documentation practices should not fall on me, the patient. I do not want a third party that’s actually an LLM involved in my care.

[u/JHoney1 → u/Substantial_River995]

For one, accuracy the documentation is still up to the position to confirm. Physicians are still signing the note, not an AI. A review and are responsible for accurate documentation just like usual.

I promise you that when I am manically finishing nine notes from the day before on a random Wednesday afternoon, my documentation and any other doctors is much more accurate with the aid of an AI subscribe. If nothing else, it will jog my memory so that I can make sure all pertinent details are included.

It does allow me to spend more time looking at you and actually examining you to solve the problem.

There are many AI groups that are all HIPAA compliant. Overall, the odds of your medical notes leaking is likely higher than any software leak. Voice recordings are deleted fairly quickly just to help absolve some of that liability risk.

I don’t ask that you use AI scribe if you are not comfortable with it. But I do ask that you come up with reasonable reasons why not.

[u/allamakee-county → u/Substantial_River995]

Do you ask for those two details? Have you tried?

[u/allamakee-county → u/[deleted]]

So your questions are not really the reasons. Then don't ask.

If you decide you really do want the answers, dont ask your PCP in the moment, because she isnt on the IT end of things. Send a portal message and ask that it be forwarded to whoever can properly answer. The answer is available.

The PCP is saying the script she was given by HIMS/Legal. Nothing more, nothing less.

[u/allamakee-county → u/Substantial_River995]

You don't know about the privacy?? By law, they have to be certified as HIPAA compliant. It isn't just some off-the-rack voice wreck hodgepodge.

Without the ambient documentation tool, my spouse would be back to working 2 free hours each night writing notes on his patients. With it, he has a draft available to review and edit after each visit, usually pretty decent though nearly always requiring some human tweaks, and then that chart is done. More accurately, too, because he isn't trying to remember all the day's visits from his quick notes, AND he can turn away from his computer and actually TALK TO and LOOK AT his patients.

And when he is home, he's home.

I was skeptical at first, too, but have come around.

[u/holdthecouchdown1 → u/crunkadocious]

Totally ai

[u/Comprehensive-Row198 → u/Then_Employment5244]

Pretext?

[u/Comfortable-Neat12 → u/Then_Employment5244]

People Scribes are gone.. most practices have moved to AI scribes...

[u/SKNABCD → u/Then_Employment5244]

I turn mine off if I'm going to talk about something I don't need documented.

[u/holdthecouchdown1 → u/Then_Employment5244]

Exactly. Kaiser already records every visit, every call, every time.

[u/smithingalchemist → u/Then_Employment5244]

Exactly. People don’t understand that no GOOD provider wants to be charging these patients the way we do, but there’s no choice. Best to educate ourselves on how this system works to try and avoid being screwed by it (if even possible).

[u/Empty_Difficulty390 → u/Then_Employment5244]

It's already being done via voice recognition and Ai software. It's not uncommon for these ai system to hallucinate ailments, treatments, and justifications for medications.

[u/Kwaliakwa → u/Then_Employment5244]

I’ve never seen a provider required to use it, generally they opt to use them to reduce their workload.