e-consults

Also, how common are these e-consults? Why am I receiving medical care that leaves meeting me and asking me questions completely out of the picture?

Hi @sallysunshine,
Mayo Clinic offers both in-person and virtual care. Video and phone visits can be preferred options for some patients before, after or in place of face-to-face care. Virtual visits, or e-consults, have been especially helpful during the pandemic when travel and in-person visits are a challenge.

Mayo Clinic wants you to be a part of your care. If you are left with more questions than answers following your e-consult, I urge you to continue asking questions. You can:

A. Contact your care team with follow-up questions using Patient Online Services, Mayo Clinic's patient portal. You can login or create an account here: https://onlineservices.mayoclinic.org/content/staticpatient/showpage/patientonline

B. Speak with someone about your experience at Mayo Clinic's Office of Patient Experience. A Patient Experience staff person will help address concerns about your care experience here at Mayo Clinic. If you would like to share a concern, please complete the online feedback form (https://mccoreprodcrmextncast.blob.core.windows.net/$web/ShareAConcern.html) and someone will contact you within three business days. Or you can call or email them.

Mayo Clinic Office of Patient Experience
Phone: 844-544-0036 (toll free)
Email: opx@mayo.edu

When I said e-consult, I did not mean virtual or phone visit. I've had Mayo doctors who never talked to me and who wrote diagnostic reports about me based upon a single test, without even bothering to request pertinent medical records or to inquire about my medical history. Very, very sloppy medicine. I'm not sure why Mayo is doing this with some patients. It is exceedingly low quality medical care.

@sallysunshine, when I had my workup at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, I was there for 4 days. I believe I had some "e-consults", an entire medical team reviewed my case. I'm very happy that a team of doctors reviewed my case, and that I didn't necessarily have a one-on-one with every doctor. I don't remember what these consults were called exactly, but I had one or two. I had this experience, been seen by Neurology, Cardiology, Ophthalmology, Gynecology, and an Internist

@sallysunshine, thank you for explaining. You're referring to eConsults that facilitate communication between providers on behalf of the patient. They work like this. Your doctor documents question(s) about your particular situation and orders the eConsult to consult with a specialist. The Mayo specialists review the information and provide an opinion. Then you and your doctor review the specialist's opinion and decide next steps.

It sounds like the eConsult approach was not satisfactory for you and that you would prefer to meet face-to-face with the specialists rather than through your doctor. And you also feel like the specialists were not getting the full picture of you. That's not a good feeling.

As you can see from @Erinmfs' message, eConsults worked well for her. But they are not right for everyone or in every situation.

Mayo Clinic wants you to feel confident in the care you receive. Please refer to my earlier message and either send your follow-up question through the patient portal and/or request an in-person appointment with the specialists. You may wish to discuss this with the Office of Patient Experience.

The two e-consults regarding my care made conclusions that were flat out wrong. It may be that they were not familiar with the kinds of medical issues I have. No attempt was made to get medical information about me. They both simply ruled out medical issues that everyone already knows I don't have, and they ignored the abnormalities that are associated with the medical issues I do have, and then wrote reports declaring me to have no issues. Absurd and sloppy. It is not helpful for my medical chart to be filled with garbage coming from M.D.'s at Mayo. It just creates chaos and confusion. I have an excellent cardiologist at the U of MN, and I now have an excellent neurologist at a physician owned clinic in the Twin Cities. It is not possible for good medical care to occur without an examination, a conversation, a medical history, and a focus on the medical issues of concern. It is fine for you to feel confident in the quality of your medical care, but since I received poor quality medical care, I'm not satisfied. Not every human being has the same circumstances and experiences, and sometimes it is not helpful to project one's own attitudes and experiences onto another person and then effectively tell them they should feel the same way you do.

Hi Colleen, Your advice is good, but too little too late. I have zero confidence in the quality of medical care and the integrity of medical care as administered by the doctors who engaged in e-consults and completely disregarded the life-threatening abnormalities that they chose to not mention in their reports. I would never want to see either of these doctors, and they were assigned to be part of my medical care team. At this point, I'm questioning what quality of care I can expect from other doctors at Mayo, who are likely to assume that the information in my medical chart is adequately accurate, when it is not. I'll be cautious and careful and cognizant of the fact that I'm likely better served by medical professionals who have old-fashioned methods of ensuring they are getting it right.

@sallysunshine, it's never too late to contact the Office of Patient Experience and get the records rectified for future reference. I encourage you to contact them:
Mayo Clinic Office of Patient Experience
Phone: 844-544-0036 (toll free)
Email: opx@mayo.edu

OK, I'll give it a try. Today I'm tired, but it is a good idea to point out facts that were ignored. Thanks.

My brother is in a coma in a Beijing hospital following a stroke and the family in the US wanted a Mayo clinic evaluation of the current quality of care and anything further that can be done to improve my brothers condition. An eConsult was proposed by the Mayo referral service in Beijing but are we just to assume that the Beijing doctor will even participate? Do we need to get his OK first before pursuing an expensive remote eConsult?