North County patients are growing frustrated with care delays and scant communication regarding ongoing technical problems that have continued for nearly a month.<\/p>\n
Several patients of Palomar Health Medical Group, which operates clinics in Escondido, Poway, Ramona, Rancho Pe\u00f1asquitos, Valley Center and Vista, report receiving a letter on March 13 that informed them that the medical provider was \u201cexperiencing a technical issue\u201d impacting its electronic medical records system.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, access to certain systems has been temporarily interrupted while we work closely with the vendor to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,\u201d Palomar\u2019s letter said.<\/p>\n
But some patients reported this week that they continue to experience delays, especially with making new appointments and accessing medical records.<\/p>\n
A Palomar patient, who said he prefers to remain anonymous to avoid damaging relationships with his medical providers, said that the situation remained frustratingly inefficient during a visit he and his wife made to a Palomar location in Poway on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
The appointment, he said, was running 45 minutes late, with clerks manually copying health insurance documents and driver\u2019s licenses for billing purposes, even for long-standing patients with all of their information on file.<\/p>\n
There has been no further explanation of when the situation will be resolved since the memo dated March 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt home, neither of us have received any updated information regarding the problems via email or text,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lew Bloch of Ramona had a similar sentiment. He said that he still has not seen medical test results pop up on Palomar\u2019s web portal following an office visit in February. It has been surprising, he said, to receive no follow-up communications.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t necessarily expect a phone call, but I totally would expect a snail mail, if nothing else,\u201d Bloch said.<\/p>\n
Local health insurance broker Scott Stern said his wife was supposed to have a follow-up appointment after a heart procedure. But after Palomar rescheduled it twice in March, they gave up and booked an appointment with a Sharp HealthCare cardiologist in Rancho Bernardo.<\/p>\n
While that appointment went well, Stern said, it had to be conducted without the official medical record of the original procedure that Palomar performed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctor basically had to go off of what my wife told her from memory because there were no medical records present,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n
Not only was his wife unable to get her records herself, but her new cardiologist also struck out.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe asked Sharp to ask them (Palomar) to send them the records \u2026 they haven\u2019t heard anything from them,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n
Like others, Stern said he is simply astounded that his wife did not receive more outreach following the cancelled follow-up appointments in March.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve just gone radio silent,\u201d he said. \u201cYou would think someone would, you know, \u2026 reach out to their patients to clear some things up, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Palomar Health, the public health care district that owns Palomar Health Medical Group, has refused to say more about the current situation\u2019s causes and why it has taken so long to resolve the matter.<\/p>\n
Asked on Friday\u00a0for a deeper explanation, a Palomar representative said in an email, \u201cwe have no further information to provide at this time.\u201d A follow-up set of questions sent Tuesday received no response.<\/p>\n
Palomar\u2019s patient notice on March 13 did say that its technical difficulties were related to NextGen, the maker of its electronic medical records system. NextGen did not respond Wednesday when asked for comment.<\/p>\n
The company has come under increased scrutiny for a range of issues with its medical records system. EHR Source, an online publication that publishes independent reviews of electronic medical records systems, recently documented problems with the NextGen system, observing<\/a> \u201ca persistent pattern of user-reported issues,\u201d which have included sluggish desktop software and \u201cunresolved bugs, and deteriorating support.\u201d<\/p>\n It is the second recent disruption for Palomar Health Medical Group Patients. In May 2024, a cyberattack paralyzed many of the organization\u2019s digital resources, affecting<\/a>\u00a0electronic medical records systems, prescriptions and refills, credit card payments, processing of electronic lab and radiology orders and access to its patient portal online.<\/p>\n So far, there is no indication that Palomar medical group\u2019s recent technology difficulties were caused by a cyber attack. State law requires all businesses and state and local agencies to provide the public with copies of data breach notices that organizations send to more than 500 affected residents.\u00a0As of Wednesday, no notices were listed for Palomar on the state attorney general\u2019s website<\/a> that lists such disclosures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North County patients are growing frustrated with care delays and scant communication regarding ongoing technical problems that have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,10428,1570,23,100,3054,6756,15550,15771,74,84,76,75,85,1696,30905],"class_list":{"0":"post-258486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-escondido","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-north-county","14":"tag-poway","15":"tag-ramona","16":"tag-rancho-bernardo","17":"tag-san-diego","18":"tag-san-diego-county","19":"tag-san-diego-headlines","20":"tag-san-diego-news","21":"tag-san-marcos","22":"tag-top-stories-sdut","23":"tag-valley-center-uninc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}