By LEE BOWMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
Do you Twitter when you've got flu symptoms? Blog about your blahs? E-mail your doctor when you need a prescription refilled or search for treatment alternatives and information even before you're diagnosed? Congrats. Like more than half of American adults, you're an "e-patient."
There's no doubt that electronic communication -- one-way, two-way, multiple-way -- continues to change the health-care landscape. But recent research shows that not all innovations are equal, and plenty of patients and doctors alike remain uneasy about letting things get too impersonal.
Results from a late-2008 survey released this week by the
Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project and the California Health Care Foundation show that three out of four American adults go online and that 83 percent of them use the Internet to access health information.
But e-patients are still finicky, the responses of more than 2,250 adults 18 or older suggest.
First off, doctors and other health professionals still rule -- 86 percent said they still reach out to those professionals to deal with health or medical issues. While a fraction used e-mail or other messaging to make contact, most still use the phone or see the doc in person.
One major reason: Most doctors aren't paid for dealing with patients by e-mail, although some HMOs are starting to compensate for such services. A bigger reason, though, is that doctors aren't comfortable with e-mail or text messaging and are afraid they'll miss something or miscommunicate.
The other big source of health info in the survey is family and friends. More than two-thirds still discuss health matters with people close to them. The survey didn't address how often such discussions were in person, on the phone, or via various messaging systems.
Internet searches come in third at 57 percent, just a few points ahead of books and other printed material. And a third contacted an insurance provider -- perhaps a necessity to find out what's covered, but also because many insurance-company Web sites are attempting to offer wellness tips, medical innovations and guidelines, as well as increasing amounts of personal health history for clients and their providers.
In general, doctors are not too thrilled about using insurance claims to keep track of the medical histories of clients. They would rather use their own electronic notes and office files. But a growing number concede that until it's possible to have universal collections of secure medical data from all patients and doctors online, it's better to have some information about what other providers have done for a patient than none at all.
Only about a third of patients said they've gone online to look up drugs or reviews of hospitals and doctors. Most still trust recommendations from people they know.
Oh, and about Twitter, MySpace and Facebook: The survey found they're not much a part of the health-care conversation. No more than 6 percent of those using the social-networking sites say they've joined any discussion about health or shared medical info with friends or followers.
Still, 60 percent of those who go online said they or someone they know has been helped by medical information they found on the Internet. Just 3 percent said they were aware of harm coming from a search.
Susannah Fox, lead author of the report, said the findings underscore that while some patients are more willing than others to use a variety of new technology to further their health, it's clear the best new communications systems build on existing social and professional connections that people already use to seek medical advice.
A second survey, of Medicare patients in Southern California, also published this week, found that older adults are even less inclined to use e-mail to touch base with doctors. It found only 52 out of more than 4,000 respondents who said they communicate with their doctor that way.
But the study, by researchers in Texas and California, also found that almost half of the seniors liked the idea of using e-mail with their doctor, although the older they were, the less likely they were to say they'd use it in the future.
Only about half of the 181 doctors surveyed said they wanted to talk to their Medicare patients by e-mail.
The results were published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
