People with chronic illnesses such as asthma, prostatitis or diabetes mellitus, periodic electronic correspondence with a doctor can bring significant benefits..

This is evidenced by the results of a recent study conducted by California scientists.

The study included more than 1,000 chronic patients living in upstate California..

Among the diagnoses, bronchial asthma, type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, congestive heart failure, and coronary heart disease were most often reported..

All participants received access to an online portal where they could view their medical records and appointments, make an appointment at the clinic, and send confidential letters with questions to their attending physician.

A survey of participants conducted a year later showed that 56% of them took the opportunity to correspond with their doctor, and 46% used emails as the main way to communicate with their doctor about their chronic illness..

A December issue of the American Journal of Managed Care reported that 32% of patients who corresponded with a doctor through the portal reported improved health. At the same time, 67% did not notice any connection between the correspondence and the state of their health.

“We found that a very significant proportion of participants who received the opportunity of electronic correspondence with the attending physician took advantage of it and noted positive changes in the state of health. As patients' access to their medical records expands and they can communicate with their doctors on the Internet, we will see increased treatment efficacy, ”says lead author of the study, Dr. Mary Reed, research fellow at Kaiser Permanente.

There is a reasonable grain in it. We all well understand that millions of chronic patients do not visit a doctor as often as their disease requires. The reasons may be employment at work, family circumstances, remoteness from a medical institution and banal poverty. An electronic doctor consultation between visits would be a wonderful way out and help improve the outcome of many diseases..

It is no secret that today the level of medical literacy of patients is far from the same as it was half a century ago..

Nowadays it is often possible to meet a person who, through the Internet, has learned almost everything about his illness and a little more.

Such people do not have to travel often to distant lands to the clinic, but simply receive by mail a concise answer to a particular question.

In our study, the appearance of electronic correspondence reduced the number of phone calls by 42%, and the number of visits to the clinic decreased by an average of 36%.

Interestingly, electronic correspondence ultimately allowed to reduce treatment costs in a significant part of patients.

Perhaps this is due to more effective disease control between doctor visits.

medbe. ru.