Editors’ note: The following is an excerpt from Medical Economics.
When patients visit your office, they may already have a diagnosis in mind. Google says that one of every 20 searches on its search engine are conducted to obtain health-related information.
With that in mind, how can a primary care physician (PCP) win a patient’s trust and resolve conflicts if the patient wants tests or treatments that the physician believes are unnecessary?
As patients become more Internet savvy, “we have to evolve with the times as well,” says Jack Chou, MD, a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians’ board of directors and a PCP in Baldwin Park, California.