The New York Times- Computers are coming between doctors and patients. Physically. Right now in exam rooms across the country, physicians are sitting down facing a computer while behind them or maybe off to the right, patients are seated on the exam table waiting to get a slice of their caregiver’s attention.
At least, that’s the scene painted in a recent post by Dr. Danielle Ofri on the New York Times’ Well Blog. In the piece, Dr. Ofri mourns the ‘loss of intimacy’ in the exam room now that there are computers there. She does spend a few sentences lauding the strides that medicine is taking now that its world is digital. But she ends her piece celebrating the last doctors in her organization that fail to write up their notes in digital charts. For her, these moments where she has to go back to the patient and ask them questions they’ve already answered are ‘lucky’ opportunities for a face to face chat.
Our Take: Dr. Ofri is clearly experiencing a real loss of contact with her patients. But here at Engaging the Patient, we don’t feel this is the way things must be. Dr. Ofri is feeling the pinch of a choice that is simply unneeded. It is not either use computers or engage patients. There are a dozen ways computers and technology can be the conduit for patient engagement.
How different would Dr. Ofri’s exam room feel if the patients came to the meeting already educated online about their condition and ready with detailed questions about their care? How mournful would Dr. Ofri’s essay read if she was able to ditch the desktop and quickly log her notes on an iPad? Or show her patients an animated program outlining her preferred treatment? Would her perspective be different if her chronic condition patients received systemized outreach to make sure they actually stayed with the treatment plan?
The data shows that moms are visiting Twitter and other places for health information. But once they get there, they don’t stick around. Ditto for mobile apps, Facebook and more. Essentially, marketers are great at getting attention and not so great at keeping it. And they quite struggle to provide the sort of engagement and empowerment that consumers are searching for when they head online for health information. Thus, in a 2.0 world, moms are still spending most of their internet-health time traditional websites.
KevinMD – In this article, Dominic A. Carone discusses ways doctors can lose patients from a non-physician perspective. Carone, a practicing Neuropsychologist, observes and speaks with patients about their medical and care provider history. Over time, he has noticed trends in stories from patients who have changed care providers because they were unsatisfied. Here’s his top 10: 
