As More Patients Email Doctors, Health Systems Start Charging Fees

“We see physicians working two to four hours every evening on their patient emails after their shift is over, and that’s not sustainable,” said CT Lin, the chief medical information officer at University of Colorado Health [and professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine], which has not yet adopted billing for email visits. “But we worry that patients with complex disease will stop messaging us entirely because of this copay risk.”