E-mail Improves Doctor, Patient Communication

Tara Parker-Pope's Well column on the New York Times website has an interesting item today about doctors and e-mail.

She reports on an Australian study appearing in Archives of Surgery that showed that when patients scheduled for elective surgery were given a doctor's e-mail address--and told that's the doctor's preferred method of communication--they were twice as likely to contact their doctor before their surgery than if given a standard information sheet.

Using e-mail did not affect patient satisfaction with surgical outcomes one way or another.

There's no doubt that patients like having e-mail access to their doctors, and may improve communication. Issues of compensation, privacy and HIPAA compliance need to be worked out before the practice will become widespread.