Comments on: In favor of patient email access

By: Ryan Maves

Ryan Maves — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 18:17:56 +0000

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.

By: Abby

Abby — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:28:34 +0000

Same show info available here.

http://www.radioopensource.org/index.php?s=doctor+google

By: Abby

Abby — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:27:19 +0000

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”

By: Bernie Simon

Bernie Simon — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 01:27:03 +0000

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.

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

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 21:50:45 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Lawrence Markman, M.D.

Lawrence Markman, M.D. — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 21:05:13 +0000

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.

By: dymphna

dymphna — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 20:38:22 +0000

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.

By: Hurly

Hurly — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 19:07:54 +0000

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.