Electronic communication between patients and physicians is on the rise, but does it have an impact on patient care?

According to a new survey published in the American Journal of Managed Care, nearly one-third of patients who sent electronic messages to their provider said it improved their health, and more than one-third said it led to less office phone calls and in-person visits.

Mary Reed, DrPH, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, and colleagues surveyed more than 1,000 adult patients from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California health system. Each patient was in the system’s registries for at least one of the following chronic diseases: asthma, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, or hypertension.

Overall, 56 percent of all respondents had sent an electronic message to their provider within a year. Thirty-two percent of those patients said sending the messages improved their overall health. Thirty-six percent said it led to a reduction in in-person office visits, and 42 percent said it led to less phone calls to the provider’s office.

The data also showed that patients with higher out-of-pocket costs for in-person visits were more likely to send their provider a message. More than 62 percent of patients facing less than $60 in out-of-pocket costs for visits said electronic messages were their first method of contact, and that number jumped to more than 84 percent for patients facing more than $60 in out-of-pocket costs for visits.

“In addition to the cost-sharing associated with a doctor’s office visit, patients often face additional barriers and costs to seeking in-person care, such as difficulty getting time off from work or arranging transportation or childcare,” the authors wrote. “The convenience of e-mail may reduce these barriers to accessing care. Also, our finding of higher rates of patients using secure messaging as their first method of contact when facing higher out-of-pocket costs for in-person care may signal changes in patients’ care-seeking patterns that could become increasingly common as patient cost-sharing levels continue to grow and the ability to communicate with providers electronically becomes more widespread.”