Patient Portals- What Kind of Poll was That?
- Ernie Newman
- Apr 13, 2014
- 1 min read
"New Zealand Doctor" in my humble opinion is one of the most informative, successful and thoughtful magazines surviving into the digital era. But nonetheless, let me poke a gentle stick its way.
This week's issue features an article headed "Many GPs still turned off by prospect of patient portals." Yet reading the detail, over 80% of respondents to NZD's survey said that either they saw themselves using a portal inside 2 years, or didn't know - not exactly a sign they are "turned off."
But here's the really interesting issue to me. The survey was conducted by fax.
Remember the faithful old fax machine? I realise that some of us retain a huge affection for it, much as we do for steam engines and Model T Fords. The health sector has taken this affection to extremes, continuing to use the fax a decade or two after general commerce consigned it to the trash can in favour of email.
But despite that, if you use the fax to distribute a questionnaire about people's uptake of Web-based services, aren't you inviting a skewed response including a disproportionate number of technological slow adopters?
Given that likely skew, I think the result of the survey is much more good news than bad. I hope so - provided the numerous details and issues are managed properly I can see nothing but good coming from Portals.
And just by the way - by definition these are patient portals, not GP portals. So I hope the people who are the intended beneficiaries have their views given due weight.
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