Email is used by nearly everyone in the United States -- from you to your family, friends, coworkers, and perhaps even your physician. Many physicians now send your prescriptions electronically to your pharmacy so when you arrive, you are spared the 20-30 minutes of waiting for the pharmacist to fill your script. Do you feel that your physician would pay more or less attention to you if you communicated with your doctor electronically, as a follow-up to a recent office visit?
Your physician is the same healthcare provider who cared for your now deceased father, so you feel comfortable and fortunate being his patient. Some of your health issues include hypertension, obesity, cardiomegaly, gastroesophageal reflux, asthma, chronic bronchitis, and high cholesterol. Your healthcare provider runs annual laboratory tests and orders radiological studies. You, and certainly your doctor, know you are at high risk for cardiovascular disease, however, you are not referred for a comprehensive cardiac workup. Your physician referred your father to a specialist, who received appropriate cardiology management, and he lived to his mid-eighties. However, you are not prescribed an appropriate medication regimen despite persistent laboratory abnormalities and serious cardiac signs and symptoms that worsened over time.
You and your physician exchange multiple emails. You state your concerns about new onset symptoms over the past few weeks of chest pain and pressure, fatigue, clamminess, diaphoresis (perfuse sweating), and elevated blood pressure readings. The doctor replies by email that everything is fine and no treatment or evaluation is necessary. Shortly thereafter, you suffer a fatal cardiac arrhythmia and myocardial infarction and are pronounced dead.
Given this man's serious family history, is trusting examination by email the best way to practice medicine? He placed his trust in the physician, having been reassured several times that there was nothing to worry about. Had he not been reassured, it was highly likely that he would have made an appointment, seen his doctor face-to-face, and hopefully the doctor would have examined him and referred him to a specialist.
As far as we know, email and texting haven't yet taken the place of a personal in-office visit, and hopefully it never will.
Laurie A. Amell, Esq. is a partner with the law firm of Stein, Mitchell, and Muse, LLPShe is also a nurse, and is listed in Best Lawyers of America, Super Lawyers, and is the Past President of the D.C. Trial Lawyers Association.
