Health Transformation Blog
In a recent article in a Danish Medicine Magazine “Dagens Medicin” a hospital doctor was quoted for getting stress in replying to emails sent by patients. The hospital doctors are bombarded with emails from patients, relatives and students. The hospital doctor thought that emails took up a lot of his time – and that he was obligated to answer the emails within few hours. He was so stressful about this that he had to go on sick leave in order to cope with the situation.
I feel sorry for the hospital doctor. But the situation amazes me – this is 2010 and not 10 years ago! Good communication is part of a good patient treatment – either is done face-to-face or via different communication channels – phone, SMS, on-line chat or emails. Actually emails are a very powerful and basic communication tool, which potentially saves both patients and doctors a lot of time. You can sent emails and answer these at times where it most convenient for you, both as a patient or as a doctor. The patient gets an opportunity to think about formulating questions for the doctor and when the patient receives the answer, it can be read more than one time – so that the message can be fully understood and not forgotten a few minutes later. This is in contrast to messages in a phone or in face-to-face communication.
But of course this has to be managed and needs a definition of a clear channel strategy, using different channels and communication tools for different purposes. And this also needs governance of how doctors communicate with patients.
The Danes are using email, online banking and online shopping in their everyday life. So it is natural that this is used as a communication tool in healthcare too. Therefore I was amazed to learn from a recent statistics from the official Danish Statistics, that only 4.4% of the contacts to GP’s went via email in 2009. Although this is a rise from 3.2% in 2008, I think this is still a very low number. 39% of the contacts are still done by phone, although the trend for this is declining.
I wonder if these low numbers are actually created by doctor’s unwillingness to use modern communication tools? Does doctors tend to think that treatment and consultation are only done physically and face-to-face? Is this a common way of thinking?
I hope this is not the case! But if it is, a lot of treatment will stay very expensive and with the rising trend in demand for care, western societies will not be able to afford this. What are your viewpoints on this?
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It is always interesting to read publications and views on the healthcare system in your own country. The main reason for me is that it is interesting to get an outside perspective on the your own beliefs. I fully agree with your view that email is a powerful and basic communication tooo. For this reason Danish authorities have made email consultation a mandatory tool from 1 January 2009. This has meant a significant increase in eamil consultations from 1,275 mio in 2008 to 1,782 in 2009.
This is very natural, since – as you point out – we Danes you email for other purposes, online banking and shopping. It is however interesting to note, that the increase in the number of email due to a recent survey does not significantly reduce the number of visits to the doctors. Emails are used by patients to get an opinion from the GP as to whether a visit to the doctor is needed or can wait – something which was previously done over the phone, but now more practically via email.
It is interesting to see in the survey what kind of topics are handled over email. Not all subjects are of such a nature that they can be handled via email – rather they need a person to person contact. For instance results of examinations for cancer need to be handled very delicately (this is probably also why the hospital doctor quoted was so desparate, since he felt that is was a very delicate matter to communicate such questions of life and death online)
In Denmark we have a very strong tradition for family doctors. The family doctor has a very close relationship with his patients and thus can discuss topics which would otherwise be outside the realm of general practice.
I fully concur that digital communication should be used to the extent possible. We have only just started on this journey and it will be interesting to follow the development and see how email will be adopted. Currently it is mostly young people who use email whereas older people will use the phone but it is my belief that the increase in email use will persist.
PS: How large is the percentage of email consultations in other countries?
This post couldn’t be more right on!
An all around well written post!!
E mailing service is no doubt very good and will be more successful in future.I may suggest if there could be developed a system in joint collaboration of doctors and IT professionals, probaly a new avenue can be opened in transmission of right remedy to the right patient.