There was some study done showing the avg patient visit with a GP is 18 minutes. That is where that came from. Many VC groups want the visit 8 minutes of the doctor’s time.
3 Likes
It’s happening. We work on the pre authorization parts with our system and they use their AI to figure out how to deny.
My suggestion is one of our meetings was just to get the insurance companies language of denials and enter that into the systems so the notes can be written to get approval. Kinda common sense approach. But there is no way to get all their denials /codes language. That would be way too easy.
1 Like
Ask AI…awful lot of them listed..
1 Like
I have learned through the school of hard knocks to be assertive with healthcare providers re: my health care. AND using the Internet to do my own research has helped me out a LOT.
For example:
For YEARS (like, from the time I was probably 8-9 years old), I had a bunch of different symptoms that healthcare providers blew off. As an adult, I was told, “Huh, maybe it’s just how you are.” The symptoms got worse after I had kid #2. Complained to the OB/GYN about it…who prescribed me antidepressants. I didn’t even fill the prescription at the pharmacy.
Instead, I started researching online. And I switched my PCP, who ordered 2 tests. After those tests came in, PCP said, “Ok, this is definitely outside of my expertise. You need to see a specialist.” The specialists in my area who I saw were, honestly, not very good.
Thanks to an online message board, I found an amazing doctor in another state. Travelled there on my own dime, leaving my 6 month old baby at home with Husband. Brought with me previous lab reports and a 6 week long log of my symptoms. Dr spent an hour talking with me and said, “I’m certain that you have X. Come back at 8:00 am tomorrow morning and we’ll do a bunch of labwork and that will confirm it. Here’s the 2 meds I’m going to prescribe which will help keep your symptoms at bay.”
That was an expensive but life changing trip. Had I not Google’d anything, I would literally have spent the rest of my life wondering why nobody was taking me seriously.
The condition I have is rare. Rare enough that when I had to see a specialist in that particular body “system” back home, the head of the department came in with the reg doctor to my appointment and said that I’d been the first of this type of patient they’d all seen since she’d been to medical school 20 years prior. then she went on to babble about how I was basically teaching the rest of them about this.
Um…great? What the heck.
Unrelated example:
7 1/2 years ago, I decided to get a mammogram. For 3-4 months prior to that, I’d felt this odd itchy sensation in the ducts on one side and it felt exactly like it used to when I was nursing my younger child and we kept passing thrush back & forth to each other. At the time, I thought, “Hm, I better go get a mammogram.” Over a month went by and nobody from the OB/GYN’s office had notified me of my test results. I assumed that meant that the results were normal.
They were not. 3 MONTHS LATER, their office called me in a panic and apologized, I had to go in for a biopsy.
The local anesthetic didn’t work. The biopsy hurt like a mother trucker and I felt the entire thing. I knew before I even left the building that it was cancer. They called the next day to say, “We need to do it again in another spot.”
Fast forward to my older daughter’s 13th birthday and I was getting a double mastectomy. Some people pressured me to just go with a lumpectomy and a month of radiation. My gut said, “Get genetic testing & take them both off.”
I listened to my gut instead of other people. Tested positive for the ATM gene mutation. Went with a double mastectomy. Pathology reports afterwards showed there were precancerous cells on the other side, too.
And guess where the cancer was found? In a duct. Stage 0. Had not spread anywhere. I was lucky.
many doctors don’t listen to their patients very well. I saw a super rude family practice PCP once who literally had 1 foot out the door despite me having additional questions. I never went back to him. He was a total butthead.
6 Likes
This is what AI is really good at–collecting experiences across the board including those that are not just in published journals. For example it can help find side effects of new drugs that might not have shown up in initial trials.
My mom had side effects from a new drug (this was YEARS before AI) and she was told by the young egotistical doc who prescribed it that she was delusional and her so-called side effect had no relation to the drug since it wasn’t listed in the package insert. They fired each other then and there I think. I know my mom–she doesn’t complain without reason.
I’m a pharmacist so knew about the drug-- I researched the forums on the internet and sure enough there were hundreds (probably thousands to come) of complaints about the drug and her specific side effect. I told her to stop taking it immediately. Now it has a black box warning. With AI it would have had that warning a few years earlier.
4 Likes
I am definitely a look it up person.
I was diagnosed with a condition that has no cure. The doctors I’ve seen this year have never even heard of it. It was a PT who pushed me to see first a doctor who ordered one type of test which was negative. She offered no other feedback as to what could be causing the edema. The PT wasn’t willing to let me ignore it. He said it isn’t normal and referred me to another PT who specializes in swelling conditions. She looked at my legs and in minutes said I think you have lipedema. Since she was not an MD she couldn’t officially diagnose me. She did start some treatment, worked with messaging my primary doctor to get her to order compression and pumps for me. She also gave me the information to have my primary refer me for OT at the hospital with a therapist who treated lipedema. She also referred me to a specialist out of town who was able to diagnose me. She gave me a lot of information that I could share with my local Dr. All my information has come from the PT,OT and Reddit and message boards. I am a discerning person and I don’t believe everything I read.
My primary doctor is willing to be open minded to my requests but I’ve not found her interested in learning more.
3 Likes
There are companies that help with this, at least for hospitals.
I have a couple health issues that can be treated multiple ways. It can be overwhelming to research the pros and cons. For one condition, I am happy to follow my doctor’s advice. For the other, I am not on board with the conventional medical advice, based on personal experience and lots of research on my part. Neither condition can be cured; rather, they are managed. I truly appreciate the ability to find various opinions on management, complete with pros and cons of different approaches.
3 Likes
Thx. I shouldn’t of suggested it. Lol. We have a RCM company coming on board.
I think it’s great you mentioned it. Presently treatments are turned down for arbitrary reasons by computers and people who have no inkling of what’s going on in a patient’s health care life. And talk about HIPAA laws–the secretary in some office who knows where has your files making judgements about your life saving drug and whether they should deem you worthy of it. Give me a break. Not to mention the time involved. Rant over. Sorta.
I do have hope for AI in this regard. Yes, maybe the drug prescribed need not be the newest and most costly ( big pharma, I’m looking at you). Cheaper and equally effective drugs may be the way to go. Or not. AI may fill that gap in giving good cheaper alternatives that benefit not only the patient but also their pocket book.
I like my PCP. She is fairly young and takes her work pretty seriously. Like most of you, I get my test results on MyChart before my doctors see them. She’ll message me the same day when the results come out.
A month ago, I was getting bad leg cramps, to the point of not able to sleep. I even read up on few leg cramp threads on CC. I messaged my PCP. Instead of just telling me that it was normal and just do some stretching exercises, she ordered a whole series of blood tests. It turned out my CK level was high, which indicated muscle inflammation. She told me to stop taking statin medication right away. As soon as I stopped, the muscle cramps improved. I just took another blood test and everything is back to normal again. Now she is going to figure out what other options for me because my body can’t tolerate statin.
I do use AI for a lot of my medial questions. It helps me to have better discussions with my doctor.
6 Likes
Gemini will also give you questions to ask your doctor.
I created an AI agent for ShawWife’s health. I downloaded her medical records and uploaded them into her agent. It suggested an explanation for a new set of symptoms she is having. I asked for three alternative explanations. Instead of providing the transcript of the chat or even Gemini’s summary of the chat, I drafted a short email for ShawWife to send that raised the key possiblities let the doctor evaluate the information and make her diagnosis. The doctor was very helpful.
I usually ask to see the time series of each test in MyChart, screenshot each time series, and upload the screenshots into Gemini. When I have them all uploaded, I asked it to interpret the results. Very helpful.
1 Like
H and I use AI for healthcare frequently. It is a quick way to gather relevant studies, guidelines, treatment algorithms for diseases and the like. We have also used it to help interpret test results and radiography reports. I would never trust a doctor just because they are a doctor. Both H and I have seen plenty of doctors that were not excellent, and there is no reason to settle. Having knowledge helps assess whether the doc is a good fit or not.
Separately, it is federal law (21st Century Cures Act) that patients be notified of their test results as soon as they are available. Having immediate test results empowers patients to be proactive in their healthcare, educate themselves, and create questions for their docs (I know not all people are interested in doing this.) Because of staff/doc workloads, it can take some time before they fully review the test results, there is no legal requirement they do so in a certain amount of time AFAIK.
1 Like
I wonder if those AI services would sell our medical information to third parties. I could see how some companies could use the info for employment, insurance, loans, etc. It’s unclear to me. I think we need to have better regulations on data protection.
7 Likes
In corporate accounts, your information and prompts are protected. In individual accounts, not completely. On another thread, I shared a link to an article which said that people’s information from ChatGPT is ending up in court cases: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/27/chatgpt-chats-are-being-swept-into-civil-criminal-court-cases/
1 Like
I’ve been having an interesting time interacting with ordinary Google AI about my periodically accelerated heart beat. I checked out clean at the ER last week and am currently wearing the Zio monitor for two weeks. But I started thinking of any patterns in when the rate accelerated and realized it was after I’d been awake about an hour.
So I started giving Google the broad details, then added details of my morning routine. It introduced me to various reasons for a spike in heart rate under different conditions. And introduced me to the vagus nerve, my new best friend. Based on more and more detailed research, there seems to be a good possibility that it’s not the heart itself but rather how the vagus nerve is regulating it.
So this morning I tried some of the suggested resets/adjustments in my routine and - yay - I was able to keep the heart beat in reasonable territory. Obviously I will continue the monitor and wait for my doctor’s analysis. But adding more and more detail and following the paths found in Google AI, it has been an interesting day.
4 Likes