To us organisations and people can be divided into 8 categories – those who:-
(1) Don’t have an ordinary email address or an email form.
(2) Don’t have an ordinary email address but have an email form, (which is many many more times more inconvenient,) and if you use it to send them a reasonable letter don’t respond in any way. We find this usually happens with those who just have an email form.
(3) Don’t have an ordinary email address but have an email form, and if you use it to send them a reasonable letter come back to you with a reasonable response using an ordinary email address, (which they have to do,) which you can use in the future.
(4) Don’t have an ordinary email address but have an email form, and if you use it to send them a reasonable letter come back to you with a reasonable response using an ordinary email address but which they tell you can’t be used in the future – you just have keep using their blasted form. AHPRA has been set up in this way by Martin Fletcher, it’s CEO.
(5) Have an ordinary email address readily available, but have it set up so that it detects emails from patients, and screens them out so that he doesn’t receive them – as Dr Andrew Brooks, Urologist, claims is the case with his ordinary email address. Dr Brooks, of course, comes over as a complete and utter ratbag.
(6) Have an ordinary email address readily available and if you use it to send them a reasonable letter don’t respond any way.
(7) Have an ordinary email address readily available and if you use it to send them a reasonable letter send you some automated response telling you they are getting so many emails they may not be able to get back to you for some time, and then they never get back to you. Lots of politicians are like this.
(8) Have an ordinary email address readily available and if you use it to send them a reasonable letter will come back to you with a reasonable letter by way of response. In our experience such people and organisations are easily the most likely to be upfront and honest and to stand by the things they do and say, and to be the best to deal with
To us, all things being equal, you are stark raving mad dealing with doctors who are in one of the first 7 categories.
In other words, if Dr Brown belongs to category (2) as we suspect, we’ll soon find out, it was madness to consult and/or use him in the first place, and is certainly so now. The problem, of course, is that only about 1 in 10-15 doctors belong in category 8 – when it comes to emails a lot of them are more secretive than the KGB. But then, how many doctors do you need.