Patients who email their doctors can be healthier

People who trade email with their doctors do a little better on measures of two chronic diseases than people who don't email, and they're likelier to get recommended tests, according to a study of Kaiser patients in Southern California.

That might be because different types of patients chose e-mail interactions, and they could be more inclined to better manage their own health, study authors suggested in the July edition of the journal Health Affairs. It's also possible that e-mailers build stronger relationships with their doctors and so are likelier to follow doctor's orders, they wrote. The researchers looked at medical records of Kaiser patients who had diabetes, high blood pressure, or both, beginning in early 2005 and running through the end of 2008. More diabetics who e-mailed their doctors had their blood sugar under control at the end of 2008 - 88 percent of them, compared with 83 percent of those who didn't email doctors. And e-mailers were likelier to get recommended screenings for retinopathy, an eye problem associated with diabetes: 73 percent compared with 70 percent.