After visit summary printout errors

I cannot speak for anyone else, but most of the time when I see the doctor, I neglect to read the “after-visit” summary and I usually don’t read the medication list either. However I recently saw the advance practice nurse, who works with my General Physician for a rash on my legs. I have a history of cellulitis, so I wanted to avoid another bout of that if possible.

It turned out to be eczema, which I’ve never had and the advice from the nurse was to moisturize daily. I decided to read the after visit summary just to see what it said. I would encourage anyone to do the same as I found a minimum of 8 errors including the fact that they have two rapid acting insulins as being active prescriptions, two blood pressure medicines that I do not take, incorrect directions on several more medicines. What are we supposed to do? We have a patient portal in our health system so we can read the results of lab tests and other important information that applies to us.

I contacted my doctor office via the patient portal and mentioned that there were several ‘corrections’ that needed to be made to my medicine list. Their reply was to make a note on the errors and they would try to update my list? The patient portal reply system only allows a certain amount of characters and my medicine errors on the summary far exceed that allotment.

I feel sick after reading Adam Brown’s account of his ruptured appendix. Many of us can relate to his story. I don’t know about you, but I would be terrified to have to be a patient in the hospital. The first thing I was told during my last hospital stay in 2015 was “Remove your insulin pump and your other ‘thing’ as we are going to control your insulin starting with NPH.”