Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 31)

THE INTERNET YOU’VE GOT MAIL … OR DO YOU? BY ABIGAIL GREEN WHY DO PHYSICIANS CONTINUE TO RESIST PATIENT E-MAIL? Patients have long expressed a desire for e-mail access to their physicians. So why hasn’t it caught on? Communicating with patients via e-mail is nothing new. But few physicians do it. “It still doesn’t seem to be catching fire by any means,” says Christopher Crow, a family physician in Plano, Texas. According to a September 2006 study by the Center for Studying Health System Change, only about one in four physicians uses e-mail to communicate with patients about clinical issues. In March 2006, the Journal of Medical Internet Research reported the results of a survey of more than 4,000 primary-care physicians in Florida that found that fewer than 17 percent had ever used e-mail to communicate with their patients and that barely 3 percent e-mailed their patients frequently. But e-mail usage among the general public has increased dramatically over the past decade — from 9 percent in 1995 to 74 percent in 2005, according to a recent Harris Interactive healthcare poll. So why aren’t more physicians making use of this technology to better serve their patients? FLOODGATE FEAR Topping the list of concerns that physicians typically cite regarding e-mailing patients is that they will be “swamped” with e-mail correspondence — a daunting task when busy doctors barely have enough time to see their patients, return phone calls, and tend to their practice’s business concerns. Crow theorizes that busy practices may perceive e-mail correspondence with patients as just more work, since they know some people will still prefer telephone contact. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM In Crow’s three-physician group, Village Health Partners in Plano, Texas, named Practice of the Year by Physicians Practice in 2006, a couple hundred patients pay $50 annually for unlimited e-mail access to their physicians. On average, those patients e-mail the practice once or twice a year, reports Crow, who dismisses physicians’ fear of e-mail inundation as unfounded. “Every doctor’s ofﬁce that I’ve ever talked to that has done this has had the exact same experience,” says Crow. “There are no ﬂoodgates [opening]. Because people are too busy and mostly respectful of your time.” Crow and his partners have found that rather than slow them down, giving their patients e-mail access to them helps their practice run more efﬁciently. “It evens out our workload,” he says. Sandra Baucom, founding owner of Renaissance Pediatrics in Chesapeake, Va., agrees. “[E-mail] has cut way down on phone tag,” she says. Her practice manager, Laurie Brady, adds, “Providers used to spend at least a half-hour to an hour at the end of their day or miss their lunch making phone calls, and now they don’t have to do that.” Instead, they use breaks between patients or during the occasional no-show to respond to a quick e-mail or two. “E-mails are just so much more convenient than the telephone,” says Baucom. “And people don’t abuse it.” IS IT SAFE? Concerns about patient privacy and data security — and running afoul of HIPAA regulations — also keep many physicians from embracing ordinary e-mail communication with their patients. And rightly so, says Eric Soto, chief information officer of iHealthSpot.com, a Florida-based Internet marketing company for physicians. “The main challenge is that Internet e-mail is horribly insecure, not to mention unreliable,” says Soto. “There’s absolutely no guarantee TECHNOLOGY GUIDE | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 31 http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

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