I think she wanted it so she could start prepping my insurance submission. But it’s sad to me that trying to improve a burdensome administrative system makes it casual to have patients misrepresent. Similarly to being asked to sign a form saying I’ve read the medical privacy policy, but not being allowed to see the policy.
The assumption is that patients will sign anything, which kind of defeats the purpose of patients signing anything.
I always pause, make strong eye contact, and go "Oh, so you normally sign things without reading them first?"
That usually causes them to go quiet.
Buying my house was the same. They absolutely overload you with documents and not enough time to read everything. Luckily with e signing it makes it less stressful to read.
When I bought my house, we were taken into a room with the selling and buying agent, and they read the mortgage document aloud, and asked if we had any questions after each page that we had to sign.
They said that was the law in the area. It took about 3 hours, and every party went home with a copy with the 4th copy getting filed with the county.
The handful of other people at the signing were mildly annoyed that I was being so cautious but I didn't care. It's my money. I'm normally a polite and shy person but if I had a question and everyone else was making small talk, I would just start talking.
I was signing up for a phone and started reading the T&Cs. Two pages of super small text. The staff member was surprised and said "No one reads that, it's just standard stuff". After a few minutes he starts pressing me to sign it as their system will cancel a signup not completed within five minutes. I doubt that 5-min timeout was a deliberate attempt to coerce people to signing up without reading the terms, but it certainly shows just how little people care about that stuff if they don't account for reading time in their signup process.
In the US, at least in larger cities, one of the signatures is often to share your data on an ERM network with all doctors/hospitals in the network. I never sign this one and it's never been an issue.
Thirty minutes later they figured out how to print it (it took the whole office to work out how). Then I signed.
I don't think it's a relevant concept here, because even if the rest of the patients don't read the HIPAA documents, they also don't care whether you read them. The staff don't care either, even if they have to do a little extra work so you can.
Shouting loudly in the waiting room would be a good example of violating a social norm--people generally expect each other to speak normally/quietly in a medical office.
The office also ignores most HIPAA regulations, leaving workstations logged in in private rooms, no screen locks, and sharing a single account amongst all staff, no 2FA.
Health privacy regulation in the USA is a joke because it's mostly unenforced. Most people just sign away 100% of their rights, and if you don't, the office will simply refuse to serve you as the forms are all integrated and non-negotiable.
I usually sign a big ‘X’, or draw a smiley face.
If being made to sign a contract that you can't read doesn't go against the premise of a contract than what does?