E-mail is popular
Internet feature
(Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series on how same-day surgery programs are using the latest technology available through the Word Wide Web. In last month’s issue, we told you how they’re developing Web pages as marketing tools. We gave you tips on developing a strong Web site and suggested how you could monitor its effectiveness. In this month’s issue, we discuss the pros and cons of using e-mail to communicate with patients and physicians.)
The Internet has increased the ease with which others can be reached with e-mail. You don’t have to be on the same service such as America on Line or Mindspring to receive or send e-mail to others. For this reason, e-mail has become a convenient way to communicate.
Westlake Surgical Center in Seattle, gives people a chance to communicate by e-mail through the center’s Web page, says Tony Westhoff, RN, administrator of the center.
"I respond to e-mails that come through the Web site and refer them to appropriate physicians or other sources of information, but the biggest use of e-mail is to our physicians," says Westhoff. Equipment requests, quotes for package pricing, meeting notices, and policy announcements are easily handled through e-mail, he adds. "A benefit of e-mail is that it isn’t lost by the physician," he says. "It can be saved as a permanent, easy-to-find record."
E-mails to patients are not common, says Ken Plitt, CRNA, community director for SurgiSource.com, a Mercer Island, WA-based on-line service that provides resources and networking opportunities for ambulatory surgery programs. When using e-mail to communicate with patients, the same caution regarding confidentiality with telephone messages should be exercised.1
"You should get prior approval from the patient to leave e-mail messages in case he or she is not the only person with access to the e-mail. You also need to clarify with the patient the level of detail that can be given in an e-mail," he explains.
The Board of Trustees for the American Medical Association (AMA) in Chicago is reviewing proposed guidelines for patient-physician electronic communication and plans to release a report by June 2000, says an AMA spokesperson.
If you offer people a chance to communicate by e-mail through your Web site, be sure to make responding to those e-mails a job responsibility for one of your staff members, says Cheryl Iverson, director of system communications for Promina Health System, an Atlanta-based system of hospitals that include hospital-based and freestanding ambulatory surgery programs.
"People think that someone is sitting at a computer waiting to receive and respond immediately to e-mails," she says. "Remember that not responding to e-mail is the same as not answering a telephone."
Promina’s marketing communications department has one employee responsible for checking e-mails from the Web site twice each day. "The employee either sends a standard response that we’ve developed or forwards the question to another department that can better respond," says Iverson. Even if the message is forwarded, the marketing communications employee responds to the original sender with a message indicating the question was forwarded and to whom it was forwarded.
References
1. Spielberg, A. On Call and online: Sociohistorical, legal and ethical implications of e-mail for the patient-physician relationship. JAMA 1998; 280:1353-1359.
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