September 8, 2026 • 14 mins
The 1 word that is your best bet in getting a response from your doctor when using a patient portal to ask questions.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Murphy, Sam, and Jody After the Show podcast. We
hang out a little bit longer. You can also subscribe
to our YouTube channel and see every After the Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
So from three things to know today, the one word
that is more likely to get you, it's not a guarantee,
but it will help get you a response from your
doctor if you're using a patient portal and you're asking
a question or needing information. The one word, in case
you guys forgot it, is the doctor's name.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Dear Dr. So-and-so, so nice to see you.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Dear Dr. Lecter.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
First of all, do you respond, do you speak to
your health providers through the portal?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, absolutely. I knew you did, of course. And I
actually addressed them the way that you're talking about. You do? Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I think, you know, I think the reason that some
people might overlook what you're talking about, and I'm glad
you brought it up in three things today, is because
in a world where you've got a box and a
hundred characters, we tend to fill out a blank versus remembering, okay,
this is actually a communication with somebody.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And, and you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Try to be economy of words. You try to be
to the point.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Right. But you know, you have to remember that they are,
they're seeing who knows how many patients every single day. Yeah.
It's not that you're not important. It's just, that's a
lot of information. And so Something that starts with a
greeting is more of a connected communication than it just
being fill in the blank.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Have you, Sam?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I use the portal all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Do you say, hey, I had this one last question
I forgot to ask, or how much milligrams of this
am I supposed to be taking?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Do you send messages?
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Seeking an answer.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I will send the message to the doctor. I usually
don't hear from the doctor. It's usually his head nurse
or whoever.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Of course.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
That's– yeah, that's the takeaway.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
And then they'll go back and forth.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Do you ever send pictures?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Selfies? It's not that kind of app.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I've had to do that before. It's like, you know–
What pictures have you sent? Is this supposed to look
like this?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
What pictures have you sent?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Actually, I had to send– it was a splinter. They
wanted me to send a picture. It was– it's great. Well,
I didn't know it was a splinter. It was a–
A mysterious growth on my index finger. Do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I remember it now.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And it kept getting worse. And, you know, this is
where you got to be careful of AI.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Dear doctor, keep in smarts.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Google images thought it was a wart. And I'm like, well,
I got to get rid of that. And they were wrong.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Well, there's your clue not.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
To use that. And my doctor's like, that looks like
a splinter. But let's, you know, let's get you in
here just to see. So, yeah, I've used the photos before.
I will draw the line.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
What you need to know.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Some things are best seen by a doctor in person.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
More patients are turning to the patient portal just because
we're used to living a life on apps, on a device,
and we're slowly but surely getting comfortable. The amount of
providers speaking with patients through portals has doubled since 2020.
Now more people are doing it than ever. And so
there's a lot going on. meaning there's a lot more
(03:12):
messages coming in. And most of the time, probably 99.9%
of the time, your doctor is not at the end
of the day sitting down and looking through those messages.
It is an aide or assistant or a nurse or
someone who it's their job to funnel that information to
the doctor or answer it. If they know the answer,
they're not even going to bother the doctor with it,
(03:32):
which is good.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
So that's why they say, dear Dr.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Ellefson would be our former pediatrician for the Kids, I
could see me.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Of course, I had his cell number.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I could see me sending it. And if I put
the name, maybe a nurse would say, you know, let Dr.
Ellefson answer that because Dr. Ellefson's name was in the message.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I think that's kind of cool. I know the team's names.
For example, you know, my endocrinologist, since I'm a type
1 diabetic, he's retiring this year, by the way. So Dr.
Silverberg's nurses, one of them is Tiffany. Yeah. But they're
all great, and so I will reference them by name also.
That's good. Because I don't know who's going to see
the message, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
That's smart.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So I'll address everybody.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It's that social thing that we all know to do,
or you should know to do, is to use someone's
name in conversation. It helps you remember their name, and
it makes them feel important. Sam, if someone's speaking to
you in a social situation, and you know that you're
supposed to drop their name one or two times, and
especially when leaving, great to meet you, Sam.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
It is a politician's trick.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
With a conversation like that, when you hear your name,
it goes, oh, good, they're paying attention.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, it makes you feel seen, and it just makes,
it gives it validity. It makes you feel more valid.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I don't know. So it also works in this case.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They also say multiple question marks get high responses, which
I think that's kind of crazy.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
You mean on the same sentence?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
No, like in the apps, in the patient portals, multiple, like,
Can you help me with this, please? Or I forgot
to ask this.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
What's this?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And you ask a question, and you do two and
three question marks. For some reason, they're like, oh, this
must be important.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Wait.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
In a row is what you mean?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I thought you meant like three questions in a row,
each with its own question mark.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
No, question marks.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So you mean like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
What is this thing, Doc? Question mark, question mark, question mark.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
WT, question, question, question, question, question, question.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
You do the alternating exclamation point, question mark.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
This is really serious.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I have no idea. I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
It doesn't hurt, but it keeps getting bigger.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Look, I know.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Someone, I know a few people in my life. who
do not like to mess with the patient portals. And
I just want to go, it's so easy, though. You
can get this answer now.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
That could be generational, too. My mom, if she was
going to order a pizza, she'd call and order it.
If she wants a question from her doctor, she's going
to call and leave a message.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
She doesn't want to do it on the app.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And I don't know if it's that she doesn't want to,
or it's just like, this is how it's been done.
Let me just keep doing it this way. Whereas we've
kind of adopted whatever the new thing is. I find
the portal much easier. easier to me than make to
me it's more convenient than making a phone call because
I can type out exactly what I'm trying to find
and it's in my head right now so I can
(06:23):
type it out rather than making a phone call waiting
a couple hours for a call back and by then
who knows where my head is.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I'll tell you what I have found that I like
about the portal because I do use the portal to
you know communicate with my doctors and especially with my
bone density issues When all that information was first coming
on me, coming down, and I had just gotten diagnosed
and all that, and I had to start taking vitamin
D and calcium for the specifics of how much. It
(06:50):
was a lot of information at one time. And what's
beautiful about it is you can go back and see,
what did she say two years ago about this? What
did this doctor say a year ago or six months
ago about this? And the communication lives forever there, and
it's my portal. I do like that.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I do get it. In the trouble of trying to
screenshot it for myself. And it's like, well, it won't
let you. It won't let you screenshot medical information.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Oh, they don't?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's like, stupid. It's your portal. You don't need to
screenshot it.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I like to use it, too, for making an appointment. Because... Yeah.
I don't know if you're like me when it comes
to making an appointment on the phone. It's like, okay,
I like afternoons. And they'll say, okay, well, how about
Tuesday after? Well, no, except Tuesdays. And you do this
until they, okay, here's what I really want. Whereas if
I go online and bring up my doctor and it
(07:39):
tells you what he's got available for the next three weeks.
And you can just say, okay, boom.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's not the pressure of a social interaction where you
feel like you're, you know, maybe you feel like you've
got all the wrong answers. Right.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I feel you on that.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Um, it depends on if I'm in the car and
I'm driving and I, you know, it depends on when
I remember to make the appointment, how I make the appointment.
I have, I don't have a problem talking to people,
but I've done them on the portal as well.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Well, when you do it on the portal, you can
add it to your calendar. You can do all the
things from, you know, from there and it sends you reminders,
anything that you would, you know, that you would want
to know.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
I will say it is something different in the medical world.
And we're seeing it and talking about it from a
patient's perspective. But we don't know how much busier it
has made their jobs. You know, for someone who used
to let's just say you've worked for a doctor for
15 years. Well, 15 years ago, you weren't dealing with
a portal. And now you are probably handling portal information
(08:34):
from patient to your to the doctor you work for.
And that could have been added to your job. I
don't know if you got a raise for doing it
or whatever, but it's just different. And I thought about
that the other day. There's so much with when our
lives change in the medical world, that means it changes
behind the scenes there too in ways we can't know. Example,
a week or two ago, you and I, Murphy, I
(08:56):
drove you to your appointment for your neck ablation. And
we were there right on time, right after the show.
We like bolted out of here to get you there
on time. And we were there on time. And they
didn't take you back for two hours. And then I
was there another hour waiting for you while you were
getting your injections and getting the happy medicine and all that.
And everybody in the waiting area, we were all feeling like, why?
(09:23):
And I could overhear people going, well, they're overscheduled. And
it did seem they were overscheduled. But I'm thinking, is
that someone like above in a corporate situation? This is
how many patients you have to see in a day?
Or is that someone didn't show up and they're trying
to hang on?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I have no idea. I don't know if.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
There was if there's some sort of error in judgment
of what was scheduled or someone didn't show up or
somebody had an emergency that pushed them way back.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
We cannot know.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And they all apologized profusely for that. And also when
you have, you know, surgeons, sometimes they are called to
an emergency surgery. Correct. And that will change things.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
So we can't just assume. I remember thinking that. And
believe me, I was tired. I was like, you know,
I'm not patient. But I remember thinking, I don't know
what's going on behind those doors.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I always assume people have more to do than you
think that they do.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I was behind those doors, and it was party hats
and streamers.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Everybody was just lounging around.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Speaking of Happy Madison. I think they might have been
a little shorthanded that particular day, but they managed it
beautifully in the back.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
The most important part, your part.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
The waiting room was not fun for that, but again,
I don't know what they're dealing with.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Back there.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You know, the other thing also that one of my
doctors explained to me is that AI is being more incorporated,
not into just diagnostic work, but into, you know, office work. Now,
I don't know in these portals if AI is helping
them to that degree.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
If you get a super long, lengthy answer, it might
be AI.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Or helping them organize or prioritize or alert or whatever,
you know, it is. Because every industry is using it.
It's true.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
But– But I think it's made it better. A minute
ago when you were talking about, Sam, your mom being
old school about it, I don't know how my mom
would handle that. She embraced technology, but she was a
privacy person.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Oh, very.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
And I think that, you know, obviously that's the reason
you can't screenshot Jody is the whole privacy thing. But
I think we're in a different— Look at these test results. Well,
I think we're also in a different place today where
there were times where people wouldn't discuss their, you know, medication,
you know.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Well, you know, he's on blood pressure medicine. You know,
it's like, okay, big deal. Everybody's on it. Statin drugs,
everybody's on it, you know?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Everybody's not on it, but.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I hear you. But, you know, they're common antidepressants. All
those things, people, it's, so you're talking about those, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
We're a different time.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's a different time and, you know, in place. And so,
and it's not that I want my medication shuttered across
the lobby while I'm waiting. We need to verify this now.
But I think that my mom would have, She would
have been more closed about that. And I don't know
that she would or would not have used it. I mean,
I'm pretty sure my chart, it was in existence 10
(12:21):
years ago when she was still alive.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Look, when your dad got a Facebook page and.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Your mom was nowhere near it.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And we were at their house once and it got mentioned.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I was like, oh, Dane, you're on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I could see her just sort of like, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
She was like, ugh. Like she didn't want to talk
about that. And I thought, I'm going to stop talking
about this.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And I hope that it's not a thing that I
brought it up when we leave. Like that's not a
conversation I want to be in. Because I realized as
soon as I said that and she kind of went, ugh.
I realized, oh, wait, I know who she is. And
she's so private. She's probably against that. And she doesn't
probably even like it that he's on it. So I'm like,
I'm going to get away from that discussion.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
At least the profile picture had both of them in it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
That's good. It was a great little profile picture.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
She didn't restrict it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
She's like, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Anyway, Patient Portal. It's here to stay.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I think it's fantastic. And just, you know, know that.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
To bring up, you know, what you're saying there is
just the same thing. rules of etiquette, manners, whatever you
would do in a communication with anybody in any other scenario,
if you apply that there, then I see exactly how
that would work. It needs to be, for them to
have a personal experience with you, it needs to start
with a personal experience from you to them.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
From you. I will say if the responses you get
back are short and sweet, that's okay too. They don't have,
they're not going to have all day to go. It
was so great to see you. Take care of yourself.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Thank you again.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
It really is growing bigger. I'm surprised it doesn't hurt.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Send more pics.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Missed any part of the show?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Get it all on the Murphy, Sam & Jodi podcast.
The Murphy, Sam, and Jody After the Show podcast. We
hang out a little bit longer. You can also subscribe
to our YouTube channel and see every After the Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
So from three things to know today, the one word
that is more likely to get you, it's not a guarantee,
but it will help get you a response from your
doctor if you're using a patient portal and you're asking
a question or needing information. The one word, in case
you guys forgot it, is the doctor's name.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Dear Dr. So-and-so, so nice to see you.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Dear Dr. Lecter.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
First of all, do you respond, do you speak to
your health providers through the portal?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, absolutely. I knew you did, of course. And I
actually addressed them the way that you're talking about. You do? Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I think, you know, I think the reason that some
people might overlook what you're talking about, and I'm glad
you brought it up in three things today, is because
in a world where you've got a box and a
hundred characters, we tend to fill out a blank versus remembering, okay,
this is actually a communication with somebody.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And, and you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Try to be economy of words. You try to be
to the point.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Right. But you know, you have to remember that they are,
they're seeing who knows how many patients every single day. Yeah.
It's not that you're not important. It's just, that's a
lot of information. And so Something that starts with a
greeting is more of a connected communication than it just
being fill in the blank.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Have you, Sam?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I use the portal all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Do you say, hey, I had this one last question
I forgot to ask, or how much milligrams of this
am I supposed to be taking?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Do you send messages?
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Seeking an answer.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I will send the message to the doctor. I usually
don't hear from the doctor. It's usually his head nurse
or whoever.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Of course.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
That's– yeah, that's the takeaway.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
And then they'll go back and forth.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Do you ever send pictures?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Selfies? It's not that kind of app.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I've had to do that before. It's like, you know–
What pictures have you sent? Is this supposed to look
like this?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
What pictures have you sent?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Actually, I had to send– it was a splinter. They
wanted me to send a picture. It was– it's great. Well,
I didn't know it was a splinter. It was a–
A mysterious growth on my index finger. Do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I remember it now.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And it kept getting worse. And, you know, this is
where you got to be careful of AI.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Dear doctor, keep in smarts.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Google images thought it was a wart. And I'm like, well,
I got to get rid of that. And they were wrong.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Well, there's your clue not.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
To use that. And my doctor's like, that looks like
a splinter. But let's, you know, let's get you in
here just to see. So, yeah, I've used the photos before.
I will draw the line.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
What you need to know.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Some things are best seen by a doctor in person.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
More patients are turning to the patient portal just because
we're used to living a life on apps, on a device,
and we're slowly but surely getting comfortable. The amount of
providers speaking with patients through portals has doubled since 2020.
Now more people are doing it than ever. And so
there's a lot going on. meaning there's a lot more
(03:12):
messages coming in. And most of the time, probably 99.9%
of the time, your doctor is not at the end
of the day sitting down and looking through those messages.
It is an aide or assistant or a nurse or
someone who it's their job to funnel that information to
the doctor or answer it. If they know the answer,
they're not even going to bother the doctor with it,
(03:32):
which is good.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
So that's why they say, dear Dr.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Ellefson would be our former pediatrician for the Kids, I
could see me.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Of course, I had his cell number.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I could see me sending it. And if I put
the name, maybe a nurse would say, you know, let Dr.
Ellefson answer that because Dr. Ellefson's name was in the message.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I think that's kind of cool. I know the team's names.
For example, you know, my endocrinologist, since I'm a type
1 diabetic, he's retiring this year, by the way. So Dr.
Silverberg's nurses, one of them is Tiffany. Yeah. But they're
all great, and so I will reference them by name also.
That's good. Because I don't know who's going to see
the message, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
That's smart.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So I'll address everybody.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It's that social thing that we all know to do,
or you should know to do, is to use someone's
name in conversation. It helps you remember their name, and
it makes them feel important. Sam, if someone's speaking to
you in a social situation, and you know that you're
supposed to drop their name one or two times, and
especially when leaving, great to meet you, Sam.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
It is a politician's trick.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
With a conversation like that, when you hear your name,
it goes, oh, good, they're paying attention.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, it makes you feel seen, and it just makes,
it gives it validity. It makes you feel more valid.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I don't know. So it also works in this case.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They also say multiple question marks get high responses, which
I think that's kind of crazy.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
You mean on the same sentence?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
No, like in the apps, in the patient portals, multiple, like,
Can you help me with this, please? Or I forgot
to ask this.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
What's this?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And you ask a question, and you do two and
three question marks. For some reason, they're like, oh, this
must be important.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Wait.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
In a row is what you mean?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I thought you meant like three questions in a row,
each with its own question mark.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
No, question marks.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So you mean like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
What is this thing, Doc? Question mark, question mark, question mark.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
WT, question, question, question, question, question, question.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
You do the alternating exclamation point, question mark.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
This is really serious.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I have no idea. I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
It doesn't hurt, but it keeps getting bigger.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Look, I know.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Someone, I know a few people in my life. who
do not like to mess with the patient portals. And
I just want to go, it's so easy, though. You
can get this answer now.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
That could be generational, too. My mom, if she was
going to order a pizza, she'd call and order it.
If she wants a question from her doctor, she's going
to call and leave a message.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
She doesn't want to do it on the app.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And I don't know if it's that she doesn't want to,
or it's just like, this is how it's been done.
Let me just keep doing it this way. Whereas we've
kind of adopted whatever the new thing is. I find
the portal much easier. easier to me than make to
me it's more convenient than making a phone call because
I can type out exactly what I'm trying to find
and it's in my head right now so I can
(06:23):
type it out rather than making a phone call waiting
a couple hours for a call back and by then
who knows where my head is.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I'll tell you what I have found that I like
about the portal because I do use the portal to
you know communicate with my doctors and especially with my
bone density issues When all that information was first coming
on me, coming down, and I had just gotten diagnosed
and all that, and I had to start taking vitamin
D and calcium for the specifics of how much. It
(06:50):
was a lot of information at one time. And what's
beautiful about it is you can go back and see,
what did she say two years ago about this? What
did this doctor say a year ago or six months
ago about this? And the communication lives forever there, and
it's my portal. I do like that.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I do get it. In the trouble of trying to
screenshot it for myself. And it's like, well, it won't
let you. It won't let you screenshot medical information.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Oh, they don't?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's like, stupid. It's your portal. You don't need to
screenshot it.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I like to use it, too, for making an appointment. Because... Yeah.
I don't know if you're like me when it comes
to making an appointment on the phone. It's like, okay,
I like afternoons. And they'll say, okay, well, how about
Tuesday after? Well, no, except Tuesdays. And you do this
until they, okay, here's what I really want. Whereas if
I go online and bring up my doctor and it
(07:39):
tells you what he's got available for the next three weeks.
And you can just say, okay, boom.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's not the pressure of a social interaction where you
feel like you're, you know, maybe you feel like you've
got all the wrong answers. Right.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I feel you on that.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Um, it depends on if I'm in the car and
I'm driving and I, you know, it depends on when
I remember to make the appointment, how I make the appointment.
I have, I don't have a problem talking to people,
but I've done them on the portal as well.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Well, when you do it on the portal, you can
add it to your calendar. You can do all the
things from, you know, from there and it sends you reminders,
anything that you would, you know, that you would want
to know.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
I will say it is something different in the medical world.
And we're seeing it and talking about it from a
patient's perspective. But we don't know how much busier it
has made their jobs. You know, for someone who used
to let's just say you've worked for a doctor for
15 years. Well, 15 years ago, you weren't dealing with
a portal. And now you are probably handling portal information
(08:34):
from patient to your to the doctor you work for.
And that could have been added to your job. I
don't know if you got a raise for doing it
or whatever, but it's just different. And I thought about
that the other day. There's so much with when our
lives change in the medical world, that means it changes
behind the scenes there too in ways we can't know. Example,
a week or two ago, you and I, Murphy, I
(08:56):
drove you to your appointment for your neck ablation. And
we were there right on time, right after the show.
We like bolted out of here to get you there
on time. And we were there on time. And they
didn't take you back for two hours. And then I
was there another hour waiting for you while you were
getting your injections and getting the happy medicine and all that.
And everybody in the waiting area, we were all feeling like, why?
(09:23):
And I could overhear people going, well, they're overscheduled. And
it did seem they were overscheduled. But I'm thinking, is
that someone like above in a corporate situation? This is
how many patients you have to see in a day?
Or is that someone didn't show up and they're trying
to hang on?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I have no idea. I don't know if.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
There was if there's some sort of error in judgment
of what was scheduled or someone didn't show up or
somebody had an emergency that pushed them way back.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
We cannot know.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And they all apologized profusely for that. And also when
you have, you know, surgeons, sometimes they are called to
an emergency surgery. Correct. And that will change things.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
So we can't just assume. I remember thinking that. And
believe me, I was tired. I was like, you know,
I'm not patient. But I remember thinking, I don't know
what's going on behind those doors.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I always assume people have more to do than you
think that they do.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I was behind those doors, and it was party hats
and streamers.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Everybody was just lounging around.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Speaking of Happy Madison. I think they might have been
a little shorthanded that particular day, but they managed it
beautifully in the back.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
The most important part, your part.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
The waiting room was not fun for that, but again,
I don't know what they're dealing with.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Back there.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You know, the other thing also that one of my
doctors explained to me is that AI is being more incorporated,
not into just diagnostic work, but into, you know, office work. Now,
I don't know in these portals if AI is helping
them to that degree.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
If you get a super long, lengthy answer, it might
be AI.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Or helping them organize or prioritize or alert or whatever,
you know, it is. Because every industry is using it.
It's true.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
But– But I think it's made it better. A minute
ago when you were talking about, Sam, your mom being
old school about it, I don't know how my mom
would handle that. She embraced technology, but she was a
privacy person.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Oh, very.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
And I think that, you know, obviously that's the reason
you can't screenshot Jody is the whole privacy thing. But
I think we're in a different— Look at these test results. Well,
I think we're also in a different place today where
there were times where people wouldn't discuss their, you know, medication,
you know.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Well, you know, he's on blood pressure medicine. You know,
it's like, okay, big deal. Everybody's on it. Statin drugs,
everybody's on it, you know?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Everybody's not on it, but.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I hear you. But, you know, they're common antidepressants. All
those things, people, it's, so you're talking about those, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
We're a different time.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's a different time and, you know, in place. And so,
and it's not that I want my medication shuttered across
the lobby while I'm waiting. We need to verify this now.
But I think that my mom would have, She would
have been more closed about that. And I don't know
that she would or would not have used it. I mean,
I'm pretty sure my chart, it was in existence 10
(12:21):
years ago when she was still alive.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Look, when your dad got a Facebook page and.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Your mom was nowhere near it.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And we were at their house once and it got mentioned.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I was like, oh, Dane, you're on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I could see her just sort of like, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
She was like, ugh. Like she didn't want to talk
about that. And I thought, I'm going to stop talking
about this.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And I hope that it's not a thing that I
brought it up when we leave. Like that's not a
conversation I want to be in. Because I realized as
soon as I said that and she kind of went, ugh.
I realized, oh, wait, I know who she is. And
she's so private. She's probably against that. And she doesn't
probably even like it that he's on it. So I'm like,
I'm going to get away from that discussion.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
At least the profile picture had both of them in it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
That's good. It was a great little profile picture.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
She didn't restrict it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
She's like, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Anyway, Patient Portal. It's here to stay.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I think it's fantastic. And just, you know, know that.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
To bring up, you know, what you're saying there is
just the same thing. rules of etiquette, manners, whatever you
would do in a communication with anybody in any other scenario,
if you apply that there, then I see exactly how
that would work. It needs to be, for them to
have a personal experience with you, it needs to start
with a personal experience from you to them.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
From you. I will say if the responses you get
back are short and sweet, that's okay too. They don't have,
they're not going to have all day to go. It
was so great to see you. Take care of yourself.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Thank you again.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
It really is growing bigger. I'm surprised it doesn't hurt.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Send more pics.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Missed any part of the show?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Get it all on the Murphy, Sam & Jodi podcast.
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