SAN FRANCISCO — Not many patients are e-mailing their physicians, and of those who do, the majority click “send” less than once a month, an online survey of 1,881 people suggests.
Fewer than 17% of respondents reported recently e-mailing their physicians, Dr. Thomas K. Houston said at the triennial congress of the International Medical Informatics Association.
The survey recruited respondents mainly from the Aetna InteliHealth Web site (www.intelihealth.com
In-depth phone interviews with 56 of the 311 respondents who had e-mailed their physicians revealed that 30 did so less than once a month, 12 e-mailed about once per month, and 14 e-mailed their physicians more frequently, said Dr. Houston of the University of Alabama, Birmingham.
“Certainly, one of the concerns that physicians have had is being overwhelmed by e-mail” if they offer that option to patients, he said. These results suggest that this is not a problem, but that conclusion could change if more patients begin e-mailing, he added.
E-mail messages were mostly requests for prescription renewals or lab results, but some patients tried to use e-mail to communicate urgent problems such as chest pains. “That is a big concern,” and suggests the need for patient education about e-mail use, he said.
Half the e-mail messages went to general internists, about 25% went to subspecialty internists, and the rest went to family physicians, ob.gyns., surgeons, pediatricians, and other specialists.
These “early adopters” of e-mail communication with physicians liked the efficiency of e-mail and the ability to communicate without a face-to-face appointment, Dr. Houston said. On the other hand, they sometimes worried that they would not get a reply, and they were concerned about bugging their physicians with too many e-mails.