Dory
Never have I ever encountered such rude and unprofessional staff. I also work at a PCP office and was calling to request medical records. We had faxed over the patient’s HIPAA medical info release form back in January but never received any records. I asked the receptionist if she could fax over the patient’s record once they had completed the medical record request. She told me that they are very busy and told me to go through the patient’s online portal to get the records myself. I would be fine with doing that if we needed the records ASAP and it was an urgent request. However, the request was faxed 3 months ago, giving the office ample time to complete it (we requested only the records from the last 2 years, not the entire record). In addition, I informed them that the records were not urgent and they could fax them over once completed. The receptionist kept saying “Miss, we are very busy here, you can access the records yourself or you can have the patient do it.” What PCP office isn’t busy? Having worked in a PCP office for going on 5 years now, I am well aware of how busy it can get & it’s completely understandable if medical record requests don’t get completed until a few weeks later. However, 3 months for only the most recent 2 years of records? It didn’t seem like they were going to get to it anytime soon either. In addition, telling an elderly immigrant patient who doesn’t know English to go online to access her own records is perplexing. I was bewildered at the level of unprofessionalism displayed by the receptionist so I asked her if this is how they handle all medical record requests. The receptionist sighed and immediately hung up on me. I called back and my call was immediately picked up and then hung up on. I called again and because the receptionist didn’t even bother giving me the online portal information. Was hung up on immediately again. Unbelievable. This is a medical office. Other providers or insurance companies are going to request medical records at one point or another. If your staff is “too busy” to be handling medical record requests, at least have the decency to assign a staff member to notify requesting parties of accessing the online portal. How are requesting companies/offices supposed to know that there’s an online portal unless we call to follow-up on the case? To make matters worse, because the staff there were so unprofessional and petty, I still do not know where to go to access the online portal. Don’t know if this is a matter of management or a lack of training of staff but this office needs to do better. Especially the mandarin-speaking receptionist who works on Wednesdays.