Take two of these and DON'T e-mail me in the morning: doctors don't want to ride the e-train

The Associated Press (via Yahoo) noted today that doctors don't like to e-mail their patients, citing a 2007 survey that found only 31% of doctors had engaged patients via Internet. 

The knee-jerk criticism would be to call the physician crowd a bunch of Luddites who are afraid to embrace the new way of doing things. But let's not jerk our knee this time. Instead, let's put on a pretend stethoscope and rubber gloves to examine this touchy issue.

It may well be that telling all your patients that you're happy to answer e-mail would be a seriously untenable idea. The article mentions liability issues that would apply if, for instance, you weren't able to respond to someone with a serious medical problem. And anyone who deals with more than a few e-mails a day knows you can never answer all of them. Something also tells me there's a certain subgroup of people who would take advantage of the ability to e-mail their doctor, firing off missives every time they had a pain of any sort, or felt dizzy, tired or hungry. 

Of course, there's got to be a middle ground where the most serious inquiries get answered quickly -- but for everything else, Google's pretty good.