Table 2.
Physician’s self-reported email use with patients and other entities
| n (%) of Physicians | c2 | DFa | P-value | |||
| 2005 (n = 4148) | 2008 (n = 2001) | |||||
| Personally uses email with patients from office practice | 690 (16.6%) | 408 (20.4%) | 13.0 | 1 | <.001 | |
| Frequency of email communication with patients | .41 | |||||
| Often | 120 (17.4%) | 59 (14.6%) | 1.8 | 2 | ||
| Occasionally | 255 (37.0%) | 161 (40.0%) | ||||
| Rarely | 314 (45.6%) | 183 (45.4%) | ||||
| Would you like to email with patients in the future | ||||||
| Yes | 463 (13.4%) | 151 (10.1%) | 16.6 | 2 | <.001 | |
| No | 1823 (52.8%) | 869 (58.4%) | ||||
| Do not know yet | 1166 (33.8%) | 468 (31.5%) | ||||
| Uses email from office practice with entities other than patients | 2593 (63.0%) | 1272 (63.8%) | 0.30 | 1 | .59 | |
| If so, with which groups (check all that apply)? | ||||||
| Family member or caregiver of patients | 435 (16.8%) | 217 (17.2%) | 0.75 | 1 | .75 | |
| Other doctors | 1652 (63.8%) | 761 (60.2%) | 4.6 | 1 | .033 | |
| Business-related communications | 1298 (50.1%) | 664 (52.5%) | 1.9 | 1 | .17 | |
| Hospitals | 757 (29.2%) | 445 (35.3%) | 14.5 | 1 | <.001 | |
| Pharmaceutical companies | 531 (20.5%) | 304 (24.1%) | 6.4 | 1 | .012 | |
| Personal friends or family members | 1923 (74.2%) | 916 (72.5%) | 1.4 | 1 | .24 | |
| Other | 333 (12.9%) | 130 (10.4%) | 5.0 | 1 | .026 | |
a DF: degrees of freedom.