A story over at FierceHealthcare discusses a survey where parents were asked if they used email regularly and if they would welcome being able to email their children’s doctors.
Out of the 229 parents surveyed, 75 percent (171) said they were “regular email users.” Ninety percent of those parents (154) indicated that they were open to using email to communicate with their child’s doctor, although African-American respondents and those making $30,000 or less annually were much less likely to agree.
Other doctors, like Scott Krugman, chairman of pediatrics at Franklin Square Hospital Center–which does not allow patients to email their doctors–have similar concerns. He worries that while some parents will try to email doctors about every little detail in their child’s life, others will try to send an email in an emergency situation.
“If you send an email to someone who checks their email once a day, you could be in big trouble,” Krugman said. He also worries about doctors being uncompensated for their care.
Whether doctors like it or not I believe the push for email communication will only intensify. Almost every other service industry allows customer inquiries and communication via email. Doctors may be able to reject the push now but I believe eventually email communication with patients will be the norm rather than the exception.
One issue that doctors will have to address is how to communicate with patients and not violate any HIPAA regulations. Practices will have to start looking into email encryption such as ZixCorp, Voltage or the various other email encryption providers. The good news is that email encryption is not overly expensive and is fairly easy to implement.
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