- Major primary care provider Central Ohio Primary Care is now charging fees for certain messages sent via patient portals like MyChart.
- These fees, often applied to messages requiring medical expertise or exceeding a brief exchange, began in March.
- While some major health systems like OhioHealth and Nationwide Children’s Hospital currently do not charge for MyChart messages, others like OSU Wexner Medical Center have been charging since 2020.
If you’re messaging your doctor via MyChart, be careful what you’re asking. You could be charged for it.
In March, Central Ohio Primary Care announced in an email to patients that it would start charging for “some medical advice” on the health software program MyChart, “particularly those that would typically be addressed during an in-person appointment or telehealth visit, in order to help cover the cost of care.”
COPC, established in 1996 and now serving over half a million patients, elaborated that most MyChart messages would still be free. Those subject to a fee would include messages that require medical expertise from your provider or if the exchange via message was “more than brief.”
COPC did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment.
Are other providers in the Columbus area charging?
OhioHealth and Nationwide Children’s Hospital told The Dispatch it currently does not charge for MyChart messages of any kind. Mount Carmel Health Systems did not respond to email requests prior to publication.
A spokesperson for the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center said charging fees for certain MyChart messages “is something we’ve been doing for quite a while.”
The university hospital system has been charging for certain e-message since 2020 after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid approved Medicare reimbursements for online services.
“These billed interactions represent a small fraction of our overall e-messages between patients and their clinical team, but it is an important patient-initiated service to offer as we work to accommodate and care for patients in ways that are convenient to them,” the spokesperson said.
COPC advised in its March email that the fees would be processed through patients’ insurance, and the patients’ payment responsibility would depend on their insurance plan.
Health costs are rising to new highs
These additional fees come as health spending is rising to new highs in the U.S.
Health spending in the United States jumped by 7.5% in 2023, a considerable rise from 2022’s jump of 4.6%. Apart from the COVID-19 pandemic’s 2020 inception, resulting in an over 10% jump, it is the highest growth rate observed since 2003 (8.5%), according to the American Medical Association.
The largest drivers of that spending are hospital care, physician services and clinical services, per AMA.
A KFF Health Analysis found that these costs have risen primarily due to the U.S.’s aging population, rising rates of chronic conditions, advancements in medicine and new technologies, higher prices of those advancements and expansions of health insurance coverage.
Medical business and health care reporter Samantha Hendrickson can be reached at shendrickson@dispatch.com or @samanthajhendr on X, formerly known as twitter.
