Going to the doctor used to mean meeting with them face to face, and if they had to run tests you would usually get a phone call from your physcian informing you personally of the test results when they were ready. Now, some companies are using the Internet to provide information to their patients. Kaiser Permanente is one of those companies. If you are a patient with Kaiser Permanente, you can access all of your patient information on the web. Test results, doctors visits, appointments, can all be accessed online.
What happens if you want to talk to your doctor? Well you can message them via the Kaiser patient website or call a call center, and they will message them for you. Having your medical information online can be convenient, but it also drives you further away from your physician. In reality, doctors do not really even need to see their patients anymore. A nurse can take blood, urine, stool samples, and post your results online. If your test comes up with something positive and there is something treatable, they will send you a convenient PDF file with lists of medications and instructions on what you should do next.
This is all very high tech stuff, but I find myself feeling cheated out of real health care. Access to my doctor is limited with no direct way of contacting him (there is always a third part involved), and basically I am left with a cold print out of my diagnosis when all is said and done. Internet has brought together so many people, places, things, knowledge, and has given people across the globe access to all of this. But I am afraid that in this case it is only driving doctor-patient relationships apart.
We may have just been a name on a patient file before ( We all know health care has never been perfect), but now we are just Joe Blow #2892718 on a online health care data base.
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