quote:

“I try to be very non-judgmental when I’m getting a new COVID patient that’s unvaccinated, but I really just started asking them, ‘Why haven’t you gotten the vaccine?’ And I’ll just ask it point blank, in the least judgmental way possible,” she said. “And most of them, they’re very honest, they give me answers. ‘I talked to this person, I saw this thing on Facebook, I got this email, I saw this on the news,’ you know, these are all the reasons that I didn’t get vaccinated.

“And the one question that I always ask them is, did you make an appointment with your primary care doctor and ask them for their opinion on whether or not you should receive the vaccine? And so far, nobody has answered yes to that question.”

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
I have been lucky. My docs use "My Chart," and I've been very successful in sending emails for routine questions and getting answers in 48 hours or less. I do think the days of expecting a return phone call are fast receding.

My email responses in My Chart are probably 75% from the nurse practitioner, who's discussed it with the doc, and maybe 25% from the doc themselves. I don't really care who responds, I'm just happy to get an answer.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
My doc is part of the Providence group and I can get a telehealth consult with a nurse 24 hrs a day.

quote:

Originally posted by Axtremus:
"... make an appointment with your primary care doctor and ask them for their opinion ..."

For just about anyone with insurance who has a primary care doctor, it almost always take too long to get an appointment "just to talk" and might cost out of pocket money.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
I have been lucky. My docs use "My Chart," and I've been very successful in sending emails for routine questions and getting answers in 48 hours or less. I do think the days of expecting a return phone call are fast receding.

My email responses in My Chart are probably 75% from the nurse practitioner, who's discussed it with the doc, and maybe 25% from the doc themselves. I don't really care who responds, I'm just happy to get an answer.

I use mychart, too. My doc is part of the Providence group and I can get a telehealth consult with a nurse 24 hrs a day.

quote:

Originally posted by Axtremus:
"... make an appointment with your primary care doctor and ask them for their opinion ..."

For just about anyone with insurance who has a primary care doctor, it almost always take too long to get an appointment "just to talk" and might cost out of pocket money. For just about anyone who does not have insurance, there is usually not primary care doctor to speak of.

Just like all enterprises out there, the doctors' offices these days also prefer you do everything through their website or automated phone answering system rather than let you talk to a live human. I get the sense that they generally do not want you to talk to a live person and they staff their phone lines accordingly. None of this is conducive to get people to even call their offices to talk unless there is an urgent need.

Reviewing my old emails, I found a few mass-mailings from the hospital system (to which my primary care doctor belongs) about COVID-19 vaccinations, none really personalized in anyway to indicate that they came from my primary care physician. That hospital system also email me lots of other things -- the COVID-19 vaccine emails just do not stand out from these other junk mails.

So, to the Alabama Doctor cited in that article, I suppose I can also ask if/how she has reached out to her patients to advise them about taking the vaccine.