Nice that the article addresses the one big reason...lack of compensation, but hopefully that will get better, also there's one other issue, training...there are many physicians who do not even know how to use email....BD
The day of the house-call is long gone (unless you're one of the wealthy few who can afford such treatment). So, if you want to get your doctor's attention, you either need to show up at his or her office and sit around in the waiting room or call first and wait by the phone for a call back. It's been that way for decades, and, despite the proliferation of the Internet and e-mail, it looks like it's set to stay that way for the near future, at least according to a study that found that the vast majority of doctors refuse to respond to patients via e-mail.
A study last year found that only 30-percent of doctors would respond to e-mail, despite other findings that indicated patients who received e-mails were 10-percent less likely to schedule office appointments and were also 14-percent less likely to take up doctors' time on the phone.
The excuses doctors give include fears of privacy and concerns that patients will send an e-mail in an emergency situation instead of getting help immediately. But those sound like excuses to us. The real reason, it seems, is that doctors don't get money for time spent e-mailing, but that's changing, thanks to programs by insurers Cigna and Aetna, which will pay doctors for their time providing online support to patients.
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