Health & Healthcare
Patient Manifesto: Communication and Accessibility
This is the second post in my Patient Manifesto series. In my first post I tried to outline some broad categories of things patients want and expect from their doctor. One comment addressed two points that I didn’t focus much on but that in hindsight should not have escaped me — communication and accessibility.
For communication, the issue that was brought up was how important it is for your doctor to communicate effectively with you. Many doctors do not speak English as a first language and thus language or even culture may be a barrier to good medical care. When it comes to women’s health this may be even more important as some cultures do not respect women’s rights as we do in the United States. Thus my follow up question is this:
Does it matter to you whether your doctor spoke English as a first language? How important is it to you that your doctor speaks good English even if you can still understand him/her?
The second issue is about accessibility. In my post, I stated that seeing a doctor within 2 or 3 weeks was probably adequate for me. However, as correctly pointed out in the comment, when there is an urgent matter, I would probably want to be seen within 24 hours. I didn’t really think about the phone accessibility issue as I know that most doctors are not very accessible by phone and they typically do not have the time to speak to patients on the phone. Most often patients are directed to a nurse to triage the situation and then pass messages along.
Interestingly, one health system that I am aware of allows patients to securely email doctors through an in-house messaging system that does not violate any privacy laws. So my question is this:
Do you want to be able to communicate and access your physician via email? If this were only available for a fee, would you still do it?
I ask this because I also know of another health system that allows this but charges patients if their problem is solved via email. In speaking to doctors that have used this system, some feel that it is difficult to keep up with emails as patients tend to prefer to email questions rather than come to the office for a office visit. This burdens the doctor with a lot of email. On the other hand, it saves time and money for the patient. However, the doctor faces a difficult task of determining which issues warrant an office visit and which don’t. One clear potential red flag is that doctors cannot diagnose disease without examining a patient. Given that email can be a legal communication, I don’t see doctors embracing it too much, unless they are only emailing back to tell the patient to come in for an office visit.
What do you think?
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3 Comments
Dan
It depends on how much I was charged for the email questions. If the person is a patient the doctor has been seeing for a long time I think doctors would feel more comfortable with it.
So many times I’ve seen a doctor only to think of something I forgot or a follow up question. Its crazy to make another appointment just to ask one or a few simple questions. I don’t always like to have to ask through a nurse/secretary/whatever because then you lose your privacy. Usually I just go without the answer. Email would be helpful, and I trust my doctor enough that she wouldn’t be sharing my emails with other people.
It is very important to find a doctor who can speak the same language that one uses.
And the doctor also must have a very communication skill. So that the doctor can clearly and effectively sending the important messages to the patient.
The doctor must make sure the patient really get the messages.
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Doc,
Another interesting article from you, and I agree with its content.
May be beneficial to actually obtain manifestos from patients themselves?
Dan