Sunday, June 17, 2007

Doctors the last hold-outs to the Internet

Today, we make airline and restaurant reservations online. We work with lawyers, priests, ministers and mullahs by email. Email and the web pervades our work life and personal lives. Except when it comes to doctors. With rare exceptions, you cannot make appointments online or ask questions by email, even though the evidence suggests that it improves efficiency as well as effectiveness. It seems that the structure and psychology of medicine drives it to waste time and money. Just one of the many things which has to change, but I wonder why the industry has this mindset.

I suspect that doctors are still very much of a producer driven mentality. While they do want to serve patients, they believe that they are the experts on how to do that, not the patients. Also, most doctors are not completely comfortable with technology.

1 comment:

Jonathan said...

Here in Spain, we can make medical appointments on the Web -- and that's with the standard, 'free' doctor provided by the government.

However, I agree with you about the attitudes of doctors in general.