Some facts and findings about e-Treatments

(From R&D @ Wortix Healthcare, LLC. www.wortix.com)

“Patients’s office visits with physicians are getting shorter:
16 min in 1989
19 min in 1995
18 min in 1998”

 

“Physician office visits:

Number of visits: 964 million

Number of visits per 100 persons: 331

Percent of visits made to primary care physicians: 50.4

Most frequent principal reason for visit: general medical examination

Most commonly diagnosed condition: essential hypertension

Source: National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2005 Summary, Tables 1, 5, 9, 13”

 
(From R&D @ Wortix Healthcare, LLC. www.wortix.com)

“According to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients usually want more information about their medical condition than they receive from their doctors. For instance, during a 20-minute office visit physicians spend less than one minute discussing planning and treatment, on the average. Doctors discuss options and help patients arrive at a treatment based on their preferences during fewer than one in 10 office visits. About half the time, doctors fail to ask patients if they have questions”

 

“A Harris Poll found that even when physicians offer to answer patients’ questions, 60 percent of patients forget some of the questions they mean to ask.27 Moreover, patients retain only a fraction of the information they receive from their physician during an office visit.28 People think this lack of communication affects the quality of patient care. For instance, more than two-thirds of the public (72 percent) thinks “insufficient time spent by doctors with patients” is one cause of preventable medical errors, and three-fourths (78 percent) think that the occurrence of medical errors could be reduced if physicians spent more time with patients.29 [See Figure III.] ”
“Physicians will always serve an important role advising patients about their medical needs. But patients need other options. Patients seeking medical information on their own are partially substituting for the service of physicians.30 A few hours spent on the Internet may substitute for a costly face-to-face office visit. ”
(From R&D @ Wortix Healthcare, LLC. www.wortix.com)