Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

This study looked at a 2024 program in a Canadian province that let patients and doctors exchange secure messages (SM), for medical questions. For the first time, doctors could bill for this service. We analyzed administrative health data from April 2024 to May 2025 to see how often doctors were using this new billing code. On average, only about 181 doctors used the service each month, with each doctor submitting about 21 bills for secure messages. Most of these messages came from family doctors, followed by specialists in rheumatology and pediatrics. Doctors who already did a lot of virtual visits also used the new SM billing more often. Our initial findings show that because relatively few doctors adopted the secure messaging and billing rules limit its use, the program hasn't yet been fully integrated into patient care. This suggests that the restrictions may be preventing secure messaging from achieving its full potential to significantly improve patient care and outcomes.