eMessaging and the Physician/Patient Dynamic : Practices in Transition

This book explores the rural and urban healthcare environments that emerged in response to the HITECH Act of 2009. As it tracks the imminent challenges faced over the past ten years, this book sheds light on patterns of change that suggest healthcare transformations and electronic communication in the future.

Ten years after the adoption of the HITECH Act of 2009, eMessaging and the Physician/Patient Dynamic: Practices in Transition examines the complex, interlocking forces at play when mandates for electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic messaging within secured health portals forced an unprecedented transformation of the healthcare environment. Technological, sociological, medical, economic, political, governmental, legal, and communication issues converged, forever altering the “medicological environment,” a space within which health professionals and patients alike strive towards efficacious, satisfying transactions that lead to improved health. Susan M. Wieczorek’s analysis discusses the layers of policies and regulations that thrust healthcare users—often unwillingly—into the newly required practice of online communication between physicians and patients. Wieczorek also compares and contrasts rural and urban early adoption practices through the use of surveys, critical incident reports, and oral histories and anticipates future trends in data mining of electronic messaging by demonstrating a content analysis of over 60,000 electronic medical transactions within secured health portals. This book identifies the key converging influences that affected the real-life, early adopters amid this transformation process and provides a practical foundation for current, on-going practice applications while anticipating the inevitable challenges of future health communication technologies. Scholars of communication, health, and media studies will find this book particularly useful.