We asked potential patients questions related to the use of e-mail for their communication with physicians.

The questions asked and the results of the poll responses are the following:

Have you ever used an e-mail for communication with your physician?

Responders (n=251) were internet users, visitors of a healthcare portal www.ordinace.cz, aged 19-69, from both urban and rural areas, 72 % female, 28 % male.

The question here shows how these results would look like once e-mail communication and healthcare professional advice would start being reimbursed by healthcare security insurance, which is not the case yet.

In another poll, following the first set of questions, we have asked our portal visitors, what was their opinion is on the option of communicating with a physician via e-mail. The poll is still ongoing these days; however the first results show that 75 % of patients would very much appreciate such
a possibility however they do not have it (yet). There are more questions on this subject and also on the topic of personal data concerns. We will bring the detailed results on this poll to you next time.

Physicians´use of e-mail with patients

The use of email as a means of communication between patients and physicians will likely increase as the use of the Internet by general public grows continually. Yet, despite the evidence of increased interest among patients, the uptake of e-mail use by physicians for medical care has been slow.

Our next research which is to be conducted in October and November 2009 will focus on physicians´ attitude and behaviour concerning e-mailing with patients, to have relevant data for the European environment. Now, we can see some results from research conducted in 2006 in the USA, which brought the following results (Data from: Brooks RG, Menachemi N, Physicians’ Use of Email With Patients: Factors Influencing Electronic Communication and Adherence to Best Practices, J Med Internet Res, 2006;8(1):e2, http://www.jmir.org/2006/1/e2/): n = 4203, 689 (16,6 %) had personally used email to communicate with patients. Only 120 (2.9%) used email with patients frequently.

We will ask physicians a series of questions regarding the use of e-mail from the office, the time spent responding to e-mail messages from their patients. The expenses associated with e-mail consultation which are not being reimbursed yet, can be regarded as opportunity cost by some physicians. We want to find out if e-mails represent larger work and time investments than more traditional means of communication such as telephone or postal letters taken from the physician’s perspective.

Healthcare system responsiveness to patients’ preferences and needs: We want to be able to e-mail with our physicians.

As the overall European vision and tendency is calling for a high quality healthcare system with a patient being in the centre of interest, it emphasizes the need to be responsive to patient preferences and needs. The use of e-mail between physicians and patients can be definitively recognized as enhancing the communication and we can already see from our second poll preliminary results that it is generally favoured by many patients. There are several other studies of that were conducted among the general public that show an interest in e-mail communication with their physicians (Moyer C, Stern DT, Dobias K, Cox D, Katz SJ. Bridging the electronic divide: patient and provider perspectives on e-mail communication in primary care. Am J Manag Care 2002;8(5):427-433, Moyer CA, Stern DT, Katz SJ, Fendrick A. “We got mail”: electronic communication between physicians and patients. Am J Manag Care 1999;5(12):1569-1571.(.

By Vendula Machackova

Did you know that…

- more than 70% of patients are turning to the Internet before they turn to doctors for help?
- every month the word „pharmacy„ in Google search engine is entered by almost 6 120 000 users?

This means that with suitably selected marketing tools you can reach thousands and thousands of users who would not have to search for the information themselves, but you can serve it directly in front of their eyes, in their e-mail inboxes. Of course it is fair to say that we are assuming you are not going to spam them, but they are going to receive your e-mails based on previous communication and request for information on a given topic. Good targeting and audience knowledge are of course a must.

What are the most important rules which make the user open your e-mail?

Make your e-mail subject shorter – Shorter subject lines results in dramatically higher open and click rates. Be aware of subject looking like spam – it certainly discourages your customers. So don’t use words such a „free“. 

Make your content interesting – If your message is not interesting for your target audience your campaign loses the effect. Very popular types of e-mails in pharma are those with image links to video interview with physicians or other healthcare professionals.

Personalize your e-mail – personalized messages results in higher click rates. Make your recipients know who is writing to them.

Find the best day to send – statistics show that professional and work related e-mails are most read on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But non work or business e-mails are read the most on Sundays and Mondays.

Watch trends – if you want to have modern and interesting e-mails you need to watch out for the latest trends. It is the same as in fashion – a different year, a different style.

Furthermore, it is the “present-day” thing! Just think about the last few subscriptions you’ve done for an e-newsletter. How many of them were delivered to you in a plain text style? Answering myself – NONE. I also have to say that I like the variety, the look&feel, which is typical for each and every e-newsletter provider.

However, the preferences and expectations of all of us differ. What I like, you may dislike. Therefore it is clear that email in HTML format may not work for everyone. You should always have the chance to choose what email format you prefer … and … to have this chance, what would you choose?

Sometimes, simple differences such as using a company logo vs. using a brand logo can result in double digit difference in the e-mail response rate. Also some optimal size of the e-mail should always be maintained and the wording of your subject line carefully thought through. All these little things can contribute to first, your e-mail not being trapped by the recipient’s spam filter and second, the recipient’s willingness to actually open the e-mail and read it.

Apparently it could be a powerful marketing and branding tool for companies. Being a place to disseminate information and news in short 140-characters tweets, once you follow the tweeters who share this info or even short versions of URLs of some interesting articles from the web, it can easily become a very powerful and viral way of marketing messages. Your message must be valued, seen as extremely interesting, sticky and sexy and then it could be re-tweeted fast. Can you find such information about your company or product? Then you should tweet about it to get the message to the masses. How about you and Twitter? Do you tweet? Do you think it is or can be valuable for you? Or is it just a waste of time?

 
In the next issue: How to integrate Twitter into your marketing strategy? How to be effective using Twitter?