In the nearly 10 years since the inception of Magenta Health, approximately 400,000 incoming emails have been received, read, and handled by our amazing team.
We’re at the end of this era - as of today, we’re closing our email inbox, which means emails sent there will no longer be received. Instead,
patients are asked to initiate inquiries and requests via their physician’s personal homepage.
third-parties and non-patients are asked to initiate inquiries via our homepage.
it remains an option to call our staff during regular business hours.
Why this change?
It’s to preserve the capacity of family doctors to provide timely and high quality care.
We’ve shared for many years that giving patients the option to send us emails has been extremely challenging. The volume of messages, the complexity of messages, and mismatched expectations are all aspects of the problem. We’ve tried many different strategies to address the issue, none with great success.
At this point, incoming emails has become the most frustrating part of the job for many Magenta Health physicians. It takes away from time better spent talking to patients directly. It leads to miscommunication and mismatched expectations. It detracts from the continued delivery of high quality care.
Does this mean no more written correspondence?
No - we’ll still be using written correspondence for all the reasons discussed in our patient communication policy and our technology use policy. We continue to think written correspondence has a key role.
For example, Magenta Health physicians still plan to send outgoing written messages to patients because there’s many different situations where that’s the best mode of communication. And in many cases, physicians will explicitly invite (or even require) a written response.
What’s ending is the ability to send us emails in an unrestricted way, anytime, anywhere, of any length. The replacement tool has been in place for a few months now - patients can still respond (or initiate) in writing in some situations, just not through email.
Why is a physician homepage better than email?
Our physician homepages have been designed to act like virtual receptionists. They can answer many common questions, and if it can’t, it directs patients to the right option for them in the circumstances. For example:
Ask it “I’d like a referral to a dermatologist”. It will automatically explain why an appointment is important, and take you to the appropriate booking page:
Alternatively, ask it for “I’d like a sick note”. It will explain when you can submit a written request vs. when you should book an appointment:
Email lacks these nuances. Anyone can choose to send an email anytime - and, in practice they do. 3AM emails advising “I might be having a heart attack, what should I do?” are unfortunately far more frequent than one might think.
There may be some hiccups these coming weeks as we all adjust to a new normal. For example, there will be situations where we sent a message within the last month via the old email address, inviting a response, and yet this email address no longer accepts replies.
We’ve done our best to establish a transition plan that minimizes these issues.
We thank you for your patience and understanding; we believe this change will help ensure we can continue to serve our community effectively and to the highest standards in the years to come.