In this article, a study is discussed that allows technology to be part of the cure in a doctors' offices. This study was published in the medical journal, Health Affairs, and found that doctor visits can be reduced in practices that use electronic health records and secure email messages for communication between physicians and patients. The study focuses on the experience of Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii when it implemented electronic health record, secure email, and a Web portal, which resulted in a decline of patient visits of 26 percent between 2004 to 2007. One of the physicians mentioned, Dr. Liang, describes a face-to-face visit, compared to other modes of health care, as expensive and inconvenient. Obviously, email exchange can only substitute for some types of care like adjusting medications, but these types of visits add up. One advantage is that doctors whose offices are less crowded can spend more time with the patient who do need face-to-face visits. This extra time reduced referrals by up to 30 percent, especially for dermatology and orthopedics. For Kaiser's integrated system, where physicians are salaried and patients are often insured by Kaiser, fewer doctors visits is logical for both physicians and patients. However, Kaiser is an exception because in mainstream medicine, physicans are not paid for answering emails but rather are paid by the visit. Since this is relatively new, there are experiments being conducting about reimbursing online consultations.
Clearly, in this article, patient confidentiality is key for physicians to contact patients, so they can send a secure emails about their health-related question or concern. This security measure plays a key role in this experiment.
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