Fewer than 17% of patients recently e-mailed their physicians.(Practice Trends)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Not many patients are e-mailing their physicians, and of those who do, the majority click "send" less than once a month, an online survey of 1.881 people suggests.

Fewer than 17% of respondents reported recently e-mailing their physicians. Dr. Thomas K. Houston said at the triennial congress of the International Medical Informatics Association. The survey recruited respondents mainly from the Aetna InteliHealth Web site (www.intelihealth.com): some were recruited from patient e-mail portals operated by Harvard Medical School, Boston.

In-depth phone interviews with 56 of the 311 respondents who had e-mailed their physicians revealed that 30 did so less than once a month, 12 e-mailed about once per month, and 14 e-mailed their physicians more frequently, said Dr. Houston of the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

"Certainly one of the concerns that physicians have had is being overwhelmed by e-mail" if they offer that option to patients, he said. These results suggest that this is not a problem, but that conclusion could change if more patients begin e-mailing, he added.

E-mail messages were mostly requests for prescription renewals or lab results, but some patients tried ...