Physician E-Mail: How Many Doctors E-Mail Patients?

We know the adoption rate of electronic medical records software is low among physicians, but what about e-mail? Are doctors e-mailing their patients?

It turns out there's not much difference between the percentage of physicians who use an EMR and the percentage of doctors who regularly e-mail their patients. Thirty-one percent of physicians in 2007 said that they communicate with their patients via e-mail, up from 24% in 2005, according to a January 2007 survey by Manhattan Research. However, the remaining 69% of physicians said that concerns -- such as liability, lack of reimbursement and technology integration -- still remain barriers to adopting the technology.


The survey also found that most physicians approve of patients bringing information that they found online to an office visit. Sixty-five percent of physicians said it is a good thing when patients bring in information they found on the Internet, while 34% of physicians said it was a bad thing, according to the survey.

Many more physicians (50%) reported using a personal data assistant (PDA), most often relying on the device to store a prescription drug reference database, according to the survey.

Results are based on a telephone survey of 1,353 physicians in Q1 2007.