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Or, maybe, renewing your own prescription.
In the software business, there is an expression: "Eating your own dog food." It refers to using the product that you are developing and trying to sell. For example, there is a Czech company — JetBrains — which makes a series of software development tools. I can guarantee that these tools are used in the development of their products. The rationale is that finding your own problems is much better than having them found by customers.
One of the "advantages" of being 77 years old is that you get a good sampling of different medical practices. The first doctor I had when I lived on my own was Dr. Livingood (the name seemed like a good omen). He had a one-man practice with a receptionist/secretary/accounting lady.
He remembered me when I got the blood test to get married, asking if I was marrying the girl whose dog had bitten me several years earlier. He pretty much did everything I needed.
Since then, the practices have gotten larger and larger and less personal. All interactions are computerized and the newest thing is a "Portal." Each practice has its own, so the usual interaction is that I get an email that tells me I have a new message in my portal. I would then have to log in to the portal to find that I have an appointment — something I already knew.
Now comes the hard part. I need to use the portal to fill out my medical history (again). To make the programming easy, every question seeks a simple answer. For example, "When did the problem start?" There is no way to say I broke it 62 years ago and re-injured it 2 weeks ago.
So I get through all that and we are off to updating (which I don't need to do) my insurance data. The portal shows me the last digits of the policy I have had for multiple visits and gives me the option to change that (No) or switch to cash (No). There was no way to just keep the current value.
Today was also taken up with an automated call ("Your call is very important.") and going through the portal to renew a prescription. So far, no luck.
I am sure no one at the doctor's office is "eating their own dog food"
I wonder what would happen if I showed up for the appointment with a bag of Kibble?
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Discussion (13)
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The doctors office is just paying for the system they were told would work.
They all hate their systems. but there isn't a choice.
And no, the vendor is not dogfooding.
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Sorry that this is going on in your life.
And in all of our lives. Portals might as well be called Porta-Potty-DataBase, as far as I can tell.
I console myself that this only relates to my medical data, and it's not like that data is a matter of life or death, right?
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This in SPADES!!!!
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And the places they're buying from are not doctors' offices, so why would THEY be using it?
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