A growing number of health systems are starting to charge patients for asking for their physicians' advice through online patient portals, such as MyChart. Here are some hospitals and health systems partaking in the growing trend:
- Evanston, Ill.-based NorthShore University HealthSystem started billing patients for some types of messages sent over its patient portal, such as those about new symptoms, medication adjustments, new prescriptions, flare-ups of chronic conditions and others that require extensive time reviewing a patient's medical history.
- Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine said during a three-month period at the beginning of this year, it charged for fewer than 1 percent of messages on its MyChart portal.
- Chicago-based Lurie Children's Hospital said it charged for about 300 MyChart encounters in the last year, a sliver of the nearly 300,000 messages it's received, according to Ravi Patel, MD, vice president of digital health for Lurie.
- San Francisco-based UCSF Health bills for some MyChart encounters.
- Cleveland Clinic said it plans to begin charging for messages requiring clinicians to make clinical assessments, medical decisions or medical history reviews that would take more than five minutes.
- On its MyChart FAQ page, Renton, Wash.-based Providence shows that some messages through MyChart may qualify as a billable medical service.
- UW Medicine and Fred Hutch Cancer Center, both based in Seattle, also note that it is possible for a patient to incur charges for MyChart messages in some cases and that the patient will be notified in advance.