Chris Kresser: We’re going to be sharing our complete communication policy later in the course, and that details exactly what we allow in terms of electronic communication. We don’t allow any email, actually. Email is not secure and not HIPAA compliant, and we just don’t allow that as a form of communication. Instead we use MD HQ’s Patient Portal service, and basically it allows patients to submit questions electronically through the portal, and then they are tagged to the appropriate clinician, and the clinician answers them and they go back to the question in the portal. The patient still receives an email that says, A clinician has responded to your question, but it’s much better to have it all in one place within the EHR, MD HQ in this case, so you have a record of all of the communication. That way it’s secure and it’s HIPAA compliant.
Also, when patients log in to ask a question, they see the communication policy right there every time. So in general, our policy is that it needs to be a brief question that, in concept, requires about five minutes to read and respond. If it’s a follow-up question from an appointment, like that asks for clarification on dosage of a supplement or how to take a supplement, or if it’s a quick question, then there’s no charge for that. If it’s a question that is long and requires the practitioner to look in the patient’s chart, and if it’s a really involved question, then there is a charge for that, and we handle that differently. Right now, I don’t even offer e-visits, we call them, electronic visits, where I will answer really long questions electronically. I just don’t have time to do that, but Amy does and Dr. Schweig, my co-director, does that. I don’t recall off the top of my head what the fee structure is for those visits, but you’ll be learning that when we share the electronic communication policy.
I really encourage you to clearly define a policy, whether you use ours or your own, and enforce it, and do not let email get out of control because it’s really an inefficient form of communication, especially for medical stuff, because most medical questions require some kind of dialogue, and that’s best handled in an appointment. And there are certain patients that will frankly take advantage if you offer them the ability to communicate with you via email. If you’ve been practicing for any length of time, I’m sure that you already know this.
We’ll be talking about that communication policy soon. It’s working really well for us now. We’ve tried a lot of different iterations over time. So, yeah, I hope that’s helpful.