The analysis of Internet and email communication in health care.

摘要

Effective communication between physicians and patients is an essential factor to improve healthcare services and quality of care. Internet and email consult is a new approach for communication between physicians and patients replacing face-to-face communication and telephonic conversation. This study introduces the use of email in healthcare and how use of email consult changes the communication between physicians and patients. This study uses secondary data from National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) 2008 to analyze some factors that affects the use of email. This analysis includes three sections, practice setting and EMR (Electronic Medical Record), quality of care and payment methods. All the three sections are closely related to the Internet and email utilization, even the operation of a healthcare clinic or organization. Consequently, this study finds out that group practices are more likely to use email to communicate with their patients. EMR is an important supportive system for practices that consider using internet and email The results also demonstrate that email utilization could improve quality of care and physician's productivity, which could positively affect the quality of care. Patients with Medicaid and self-pay are more likely to use email to communicate with their physicians.