Most doctors are simply not interested in what those dot-coms are selling and it may take years before they are. At the very least, doctors are cool to it. E-health's growing pains are especially grating. Physicians may be able to write a prescription electronically, but the patient's pharmacy of choice may not be able to receive it that way. Precertification, referrals and payment over the Web all sound good, but doctors don't like it when a site can't connect with every plan.
Privacy is also a worry.
The concern that a paper file may be peeked at, lost or stolen seems almost quaint in light of how far an electronic file can travel in cyberspace. It is the rising tide of younger physicians that is presumed to be the salvation of the e-health business, and in that regard the conventional wisdom is at least partially correct. The AMA survey bears out that the younger the doctor, the more likely the Web user. But the numbers don't so neatly compute. Presumably it's the generation who learned to love the Web in college and medical school that will be most comfortable with it, yet the U.S. graduates only about 16,000 new physicians a year into a universe of more than 600,000 doctors.