Flickr: iPhonewiz

by J. D’Abbraccio RN, MSN

Do you have an email address? Chances are that your doctor has one too. Have you ever asked your doctor for their email address? Could you email your doctor right now if you wanted to? The answer is probably not. The truth is that most doctors are not interested in email contact with their patient. According to statistics gathered by the American Medical Association and Medem’s Fifth Physicians ‘Use of the Internet’ study: “more than 90% of consumers say they would like to correspond with their doctor online, but the surveys suggest only 5% to 10% of doctors use e-mail in patient care.”

As we already know from our every day personal use, e-mail can be a great tool for communication if used appropriately. When it comes to managing our healthcare, why can’t patients use e-mail for routine matters such as requesting prescription refills, test results, appointments, medical documents and asking simple non-emergent questions. This can lead to the decrease traffic of telephone calls and better patient satisfaction from not having to remain on phone to speak to someone, or wait all day for a physician to call back and avoid unnecessary trips to the doctor’s office. The list of reasons can go on and on.

Latest technological advances with mobile devices such as Blackberry, iPhones, and wireless laptops have made it more convenient for doctors and patients to correspond with each other at any time and from anywhere in the world.

So why aren’t majority of doctors using emails to communicate with their patients? Some of the reasons may include the trepidation that their workload may increase without financial compensation or that patients will send urgent e-mails that don’t get answered promptly resulting in increased health risk for the patient as well as potential liability and confidentiality issues. However, if doctors can provide clear written guidelines to patients on emailing protocol, apprehension of using email may eventually fade away.

Here is a link on The American Medical Association Website which provides guidelines for Physician-Patient Electronic Communication:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/our-people/member-groups-sections/young-physicians-section/advocacy-resources/guidelines-physician-patient-electronic-communications.shtml

Do you think it is about time that every doctor should provide their patient the option to communicate via email? Would you email your doctor for routine matters if the option was available? Tell us what you think.