New article about how little doctors use email… for patients.

Posted by Paul in e-health, physicians on 04 29th, 2008 | no responses

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. We also have another blog you may be interested in reading. If you have decided that you like us and want to talk more, contact our sales team. They would love to talk. Thanks for visiting!

From the Boston Globe:

LOS ANGELES—Suzanne Kreuziger is a registered nurse who uses e-mail almost exclusively to communicate with friends. But when it comes to reaching her doctor, there’s a frustrating firewall.

The barrier is her doctor’s own reluctance to talk to patients through e-mail.

“It makes sense to me to have the words laid out, to be able to re-read, to go back to it at a convenient time,” the 34-year-old Milwaukee woman recently wrote on a social networking site. “If I were able to ask my physician questions this way, it would make my own health care much easier.”

Kreuziger’s experience is shared by most Americans: They want the convenience of e-mail for non-urgent medical issues, but fewer than a third of U.S. doctors use e-mail to communicate with patients, according to recent physician surveys

So I’ve heard the arguments about doctors not wanting to use technology (which I don’t believe; check the trunk of their European sedans — you’ll see some fine golf technology there) and the challenges about recording this information and HIPAA blah blah blah.

Isn’t this about the fact that a) most health plans won’t reimburse for a physician’s visit via email and b) the fear of lawsuits?

You can also read the full low-down of how little doctors use email.