Electronic Patient Communication in Norwegian Municipal Health Institutions

摘要

During 2017, the Norwegian center for e-health research (NSE) conducted a national survey of the extra labor generated by incompatible Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems in municipal health institutions. We sent out an electronic questionnaire to 283 Norwegian municipalities and addressed 5 types of health service in each community during the spring of 2017. In this paper, we describe and analyze parts of our national survey, focusing on the answers given to questions concerning direct electronic communication between the different health services and their clients. We focus on the part of the investigation concerning the municipal health services' and GPs' electronic communication with their target populations. We are primarily interested in mapping to which extent the municipalities at present use electronic means for communicating with their health service clients, and which ICT systems are applied to facilitate such communication. In our material, we are able to distinguish between 5 main municipal health services, staff work roles, and size of municipalities in terms of population. Our results suggest that around one third of the Norwegian health institutions in primary care apply electronic equipment for some of their communication with the patients. SMS for reminders has the highest score, but also appointment and prescription reservations are in common use.