In favor of patient email access

21 Jun
2005

Prescription for doctors: E-mail

In a 2002 survey by Harris Interactive, 90% of adults with Internet access indicated they want to communicate with their physicians via e-mail. But a survey last year by Manhattan Research, a marketing information and services firm, found that less than 20% of physicians communicate via e-mail.

The top reason doctors give for withholding their e-mail address is the fear that it will lead to “too much access” and they will be barraged with messages about “trivial matters,” according to a Journal of Family Practice article in 2001.

In other words, patients can’t be trusted not to abuse our doctors’ time. But if doctors finally moved into the high-tech age, they’d soon discover that many of their concerns about e-mail are misplaced.

The commentary does a nice job of painting a complete picture of the field.

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8 Responses to In favor of patient email access

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Hurly

June 21st, 2005 at 1:07 pm

I would like to hear the legal industry on liability issues. Also we tried this where I practice with the opposite result. We were constantly being asked to refill meds without seeing the patient, diagnose by e-mail, hold thier hand about meds, medical problems, or what they had read on the internet. Patients used it to ty and bypass the appointment system. Just did’t work out in our system.

Avatar

dymphna

June 21st, 2005 at 2:38 pm

My doctor was always good about email but the lawyers told her to cut it out…liability and all that garbage. Now I have to leave a message with the gatekeeper, stay off the computer (we have dial-up) in case she calls.

What a royal pain. I loathe lawyers.

Avatar

Lawrence Markman, M.D.

June 21st, 2005 at 3:05 pm

Several potential problems with e-mail access by patients:

1. This is an additional service for which the system will not reimburse for our time and expertise.

2. Will there be liability issues regarding delayed responses to e-mails?

3. How will we differentiate legitimate e-mails from spam? I currently delete e-mails without opening them if I don’t recognize the sender. If I give patients my e-mail address, I’m sure I will unintentionally delete many legitimate messages.

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Subaqua Sternal Rubs » Blog Archive » Prescription for doctors: E-mail

June 21st, 2005 at 3:50 pm

[...] rmation and services firm, found that less than 20% of physicians communicate via e-mail.” Doctor Bob is for allowing patients email access, as am [...]

Avatar

Bernie Simon

June 21st, 2005 at 7:27 pm

E-mail seems preferable to phone calls in that the doctor’s normal work flow is not interupted and the patient has a written record of the exchange. Seems like a win-win situation to me. You do answer patient calls, don’t you?

Off topic article of the day:

Medical societies worry about drug company influence.

Avatar

Abby

June 22nd, 2005 at 3:27 pm

Well, we need to work on how we reimburse doctors then, because people are busy. The CEO of Partners Health really likes the idea, although he seems to be a hyper-driven person who answers his e-mail at 11 PM.

Thomas Lee on Chris Lydon’s Open Source (http://www.radioopensource.org)

http://www.archive.org/audio/audio-details-db.php?collectionid=053105&collection=opensource_audio

The show was titled “The Doctor Will Google you Now”

Avatar

Abby

June 22nd, 2005 at 3:28 pm

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Ryan Maves

June 25th, 2005 at 12:17 pm

I’ve given a number of my patients access to my work e-mail account. Thus far it’s worked pretty well and I haven’t had any problems with abuse. I do need to find a better way of documenting our exchanges than I do (other than just saving the messages), but so far so good. Of course, I work for the Man, so reimbursement is not an issue.

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