Medical communication between Patient-Doctor is considered privileged, and demands strict confidentiality.

Features of medical communication-

1) Effective interaction between the clinician and patient,

2) Observance of medicolegal prudence

Advantages of using e-mail

• Accelerates communication of the written word.

• Allows communication any time of day.

• Does not need the attention of both parties at the same time.

Advantages…

• Provides a mechanism for sending the same health education information simultaneously to many patients,

• Is simple, convenient and inexpensive to use,

• Enables physicians to direct patients to health information on the Internet.

Informed consent for use of e-mail.

Guidelines. * Provide instructions for when and how to

escalate to phone calls and office visits. * Describe security mechanisms in place. * Indemnify the health care institution for

information loss due to technical failures. * Waive encryption requirement, if any, at

patient's insistence.

Practical implications -

• Patients to put their name and patient identification number in the body of the message.

• Print all messages, with replies and confirmation of receipt, and place in patient's paper chart.

Categorize emails

Patients to put category of transaction in subject line of message for filtering:

eg.• “prescription,” • “appointment,” • “medical advice,” • “billing question”.

Security

• Never forward patient-identifiable information to a third party without the patient's express permission.

• Do not share professional e-mail accounts with family members.

• Do not use unencrypted wireless communications with patient-identifiable information.

• Perform at least weekly backups of mail onto long-term storage.

• Do not use e-mail for urgent matters.

• Both parties to use Auto-reply tool to confirm receipt of message.

• Maintain a mailing list of patients, but Do not send group mailings where recipients are visible to each other. Use blind copy feature in software.

•http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC61279/?tool=pubmed

•https://www.amia.org/mbrcenter/pubs/email_guidelines.asp

Soul Thang Composed by: Scott P. Schreer, Stephen A. Love.

Sr. Advisor (Medical communications)

Digital-medicine.blogspot.com