Last year, physicians at Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente received approximately 13 million secure emails from patients.
That number is more than the number of visits to Kaiser clinics for the year, said Megan Zimmerman, chief of staff for health plan business technology solutions and services at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, at the 11th Annual World Health Care Congress in National Harbor, Md., on Monday.
3 challenges arise from the increase in patient-provider email communication
What does this mean for providers and health systems? It suggests patients are ready and eager for a new, more convenient form of communication with physicians. It also means new workflow challenges, and reimbursement issues.
Each physician handles email responses in their own way. For some, they respond directly and almost immediately on their mobile devices. For others, the emails may flow through medical assistants, registered nurses, nurse practitioners or others, and may never reach the physician unless absolutely necessary.
As the number of emails providers receive grows, they will need to adjust their workflows to accommodate the increasing number of responses required. Will they be able to manage responses on their own? How should emails be triaged and by whom? Should health systems and large practices standardize work flows around emails or leave it to individuals providers to devise the best systems for them?
Of more concern, email communications are not reimbursed by most payers. As the number of emails to providers grow, will their reimbursement suffer, as they spend more time emailing and less time in patient exam rooms? Or, will they just do more of both, despite potential work-life balance concerns?
If providers do take on more risk for patients, as expected, reimbursement challenges could work themselves out by way of new payment models: capitated payments would provide reimbursement for any patient care activity, including email. Could email, or perhaps telemedicine, become the new in-office visit? It’s likely, as patients and employers seek care that is cheaper and more convenient. If this is the case, what does it mean for providers?
When I look at my professional life compared to those of my friends and family in healthcare, I’m always in awe of their ability to stay on the feet all day, and a little bit jealous that their days are spent with face-to-face interactions, moving from room to room, with little time to check their email or cell phones. Now though, the changing dynamics of provider-patient interaction, coupled with technological advances, mean healthcare is changing, and how physicians spend their days could change along with it.