Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Using Technology to Skip the Doctor’s Office

I wish my doctor answered questions via email. Using Technology to Skip the Doctor’s Office.

"A study published on Tuesday in the medical journal, Health Affairs found that visits to the doctor’s office can be significantly reduced in practices that use electronic health records and secure e-mail messages between physicians and patients. The study, focusing on the experience of Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii when it implemented electronic health records, secure e-mail and a Web portal, found that patient visits declined 26 percent from 2004 to 2007."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think something is not jelling as far as (some) doctors and computers go. I do not know what is up with that. More often then not I saw them clumsily operating some pretty ugly looking (DOS based?) programs... E-mail may indeed be a bleeding edge in that world...

Howard said...

My doc at Mt Auburn Hospital was complaining about an internal email system that was still dos based and couldn't do "Reply". Shifting to an outsourced google system would probably make a world of difference, but then again, there has to be HIPPA compliance. And as the article points out, docs aren't paid for providing email services.