To us, emails have created a situation in which an enormous tussle is going on at every level of our societies, affecting just about every one in them.
In the area of health care services it involves the whole range of people and organisations, from the enormous multi-national organisations like Bupa, (with it’s 80,000 employees,) and Ramsay Health, (with it’s 30,000 employees,) down to local GPs perhaps working as single self employed people. It’s encapsulated in this question – “Can I/we get away with NOT having an ordinary email address readily available and NOT providing reasonable responses to reasonable emails sent to me, or not?”
Everything about this matter is incredibly simple.
Becoming the sort of person or organisation that has an ordinary email address readily available and provides reasonable responses to reasonable emails to reasonable sent to them involves a lot of changes, a lot of time and trouble, and a lot of expense.
Of course, you won’t get involved in all of this, if you can get away with not providing it.
For prospective patients and customers there are enormous advantages in dealing with people and organisations like this.
You will only stop getting away with this if your competitors start doing it more than you are, and the people start giving preference to those who do.