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Repugnant Business Practices: Sutter Health
Sep. 5th, 2025 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arlieYesterday I had a rather inconclusive appointment with a physiatrist at Sutter Health. The appointment was inconclusive because he was unable to read the CD with the MRI results, from another outfit called SimonMed Imaging. I'd been referred to one of the physiatrist's colleagues by the doctor who'd sent me to SimonMed. Yet somehow her report had never reached Sutter Health. The text-based MRI report had reached neither Sutter Health, nor my primary care physician, nor me - but the referring orthopedic surgeon had explained the MRI to me verbally, so I knew basically what it said - she'd also had no problem accessing it, but she's in-network with SimonMed.
I spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon on 3 separate "my health" type web sites, for Sutter Health, Simon Med, and my primary care doctor. I cut and pasted the textual MRI report to both the physiatrist and the primary care doc, via each of their messaging systems - which had a character limit, requiring the report to be split into multiple parts, and AFAICT no "upload important medical info" interface.
My primary care doctor responded later that day via the messaging system, which sent me an email telling me to check there for a message. As of noon today, I had received no similar message from Sutter Health's system.
I had, however, received a request to review the physiatrist on Google. The message came from feedback@sutterhealth.org (I have since received an email telling me the physiatrist has responded on their system.)
I reacted extremely badly to the email, to the point of writing this name and shame about the medical organization. I'm rather disgusted about getting requests for feedback rather before I get anything resembling results. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of writing reviews for doctors, particularly ones one has only seen once. (I feel similarly about medical advertising, or maybe rather worse.)
I was already getting warning signals about Sutter Health, suspecting an excessive focus on profit along with low grade sloppiness about minor patient facing matters, compared to two other health organizations I've used in the past year or two. (I have no useful information about medical matters.) This request for review made those signals rather louder and harder to discount.
Meanwhile, I don't know whether Simon Med produced a bad CD - of whether that problem originates at Sutter Health. I also don't recall for sure whether SimonMed was definitely told to CC everything to my primary care doctor (the MRI was last April; I didn't schedule the physiatrist until after we knew that physical therapy wasn't helping). I'm suspicious of them too, but less so - in part because CCing the primary care doctor seems to be something the patient must explicitly request; otherwise results may just go to the requesting physician.
I spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon on 3 separate "my health" type web sites, for Sutter Health, Simon Med, and my primary care doctor. I cut and pasted the textual MRI report to both the physiatrist and the primary care doc, via each of their messaging systems - which had a character limit, requiring the report to be split into multiple parts, and AFAICT no "upload important medical info" interface.
My primary care doctor responded later that day via the messaging system, which sent me an email telling me to check there for a message. As of noon today, I had received no similar message from Sutter Health's system.
I had, however, received a request to review the physiatrist on Google. The message came from feedback@sutterhealth.org (I have since received an email telling me the physiatrist has responded on their system.)
I reacted extremely badly to the email, to the point of writing this name and shame about the medical organization. I'm rather disgusted about getting requests for feedback rather before I get anything resembling results. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of writing reviews for doctors, particularly ones one has only seen once. (I feel similarly about medical advertising, or maybe rather worse.)
I was already getting warning signals about Sutter Health, suspecting an excessive focus on profit along with low grade sloppiness about minor patient facing matters, compared to two other health organizations I've used in the past year or two. (I have no useful information about medical matters.) This request for review made those signals rather louder and harder to discount.
Meanwhile, I don't know whether Simon Med produced a bad CD - of whether that problem originates at Sutter Health. I also don't recall for sure whether SimonMed was definitely told to CC everything to my primary care doctor (the MRI was last April; I didn't schedule the physiatrist until after we knew that physical therapy wasn't helping). I'm suspicious of them too, but less so - in part because CCing the primary care doctor seems to be something the patient must explicitly request; otherwise results may just go to the requesting physician.
