“The waiting rooms in doctors’ offices rank right up there with bus stations as places to avoid. They are typically filled with cranky people, feeling lousy.
Technology, it seems, can provide at least a partial cure. A study published on Tuesday in the medical journal, Health Affairs found that visits to the doctor’s office can be significantly reduced in practices that use electronic health records and secure e-mail messages between physicians and patients. The study, focusing on the experience of Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii when it implemented electronic health records, secure e-mail and a Web portal, found that patient visits declined 26 percent from 2004 to 2007.”
Article
Steve Lohr, The New York Times, 10 March 2009
