Moyer Cheryl A, Stern David T, Dobias Karen S, Cox Douglas T, Katz Steven J
Consortium for Health Outcomes, Innovation, and Cost-Effectiveness Studies, University of Michigan School of Medicine, Ann Arbor 48109-0409, USA.
Am J Manag Care. 2002 May;8(5):427-33.
To determine e-mail utilization patterns and attitudes toward e-mail use among primary care physicians and their ambulatory outpatient clinic patients.
Cross-sectional baseline survey.
Participants included 476 consecutive outpatient clinic patients, 126 general medical and family practice physicians, and 16 clinical and office staff from 2 large primary care centers within an academic teaching system. They completed a survey about e-mail usage patterns and their attitudes toward using e-mail for patient-provider communication.
More than half of patients (52.1%) were self-defined e-mail users, yet only 10.5% of those users had ever used e-mail to communicate with their doctors. Seventy percent of all patients said they would be willing to use e-mail to communicate with their doctors. Overall, patients were concerned about logistics, such as whether the message would get to the right person and how long it would take to get a response. Physicians and staff were more optimistic than patients about the potential for e-mail to improve the doctor-patient relationship. Patient e-mail users, patient e-mail nonusers, physicians, and staff reported low levels of concern about the security and privacy of e-mail.
Patient-provider e-mail may diffuse slowly into the primary care clinical practice setting because of patient concerns about efficiency and effectiveness and whether e-mail use will improve their relationship with providers. Managed care organizations that plan to build e-mail and Web-based patient portals will need to promote these technologies in a way that educates both patient and providers about their appropriate use.
确定基层医疗医生及其门诊患者的电子邮件使用模式以及对电子邮件使用的态度。
横断面基线调查。
参与者包括来自一个学术教学系统内2个大型基层医疗中心的476名连续门诊患者、126名普通内科和家庭医生以及16名临床和办公室工作人员。他们完成了一项关于电子邮件使用模式以及对使用电子邮件进行医患沟通的态度的调查。
超过半数的患者（52.1%）自称是电子邮件用户，但这些用户中只有10.5%曾使用电子邮件与医生沟通。所有患者中有70%表示愿意使用电子邮件与医生沟通。总体而言，患者担心一些实际问题，比如信息是否会传达到正确的人手中以及得到回复需要多长时间。医生和工作人员对电子邮件改善医患关系的潜力比患者更为乐观。患者电子邮件用户、非用户、医生和工作人员对电子邮件的安全性和隐私性的担忧程度较低。
由于患者担心效率和效果以及电子邮件的使用是否会改善他们与医疗服务提供者的关系，医患电子邮件可能会缓慢地融入基层医疗临床实践环境。计划建立基于电子邮件和网络的患者门户的管理式医疗组织需要以一种既能让患者又能让医疗服务提供者了解其合理使用方法的方式来推广这些技术。
