Less Than 7% Are Emailing Patients
Doctors aren't exactly lining up to swap emails with their patients, as it turns out.
According to the Center for Studying Health System Change, only 6.7% of the 4,200-plus office-based physicians who responded to a 2008 national survey "routinely" emailed patients about clinical matters. Most just didn't have the technology available, but even among the doctors who had email access, only 19.5% regularly emailed with patients.
This survey didn't ask non-emailing physicians why they weren't trading LOLs and emoticons with their patients, but the CSHSC brief has a host of previously cited reasons: "lack of reimbursement, the potential for increased workload, maintaining data privacy and security, avoiding increased medical liability and the uncertain impact on care quality." (Given that list, it's hard to figure out why any physician would choose to email patients.)
Doctors working in practices the have already converted to electronic medical records were more likely to communicate with patients via email. So were physicians in HMOs or academic centers, compared to those in solo or two-doctor practices.
Given the reimbursement issue, it's not surprising that physicians on a fixed salary were more likely to communicate with patients than those with other compensation arrangements. (Aetna and Cigna are among the insurers reimbursing providers for communicating with patients via secure messaging.) Other options for compensation include a set per-patient fee paid to physicians for agreeing to coordinate care using email and other means or an annual fee paid directly by patients for email access privileges, the brief says.
Policy types "might more systematically explore whether email or other secure electronic communication with patients can deliver on its promise to enhance communication, increase patient engagement and satisfaction, improve patient outcomes and quality of care and boost efficiency," the brief says. If email does all (or some) of that, "expanding incentives to encourage email communication between physicians and patients might be a worthwhile investment."
By Katherine Hobson, The Wall Street Journal
Reviewed / Posted by: Scott W. Yates, MD, MBA, MS, FACP
