Email Disclaimer 1

E-mail the Staff

This e-mail link provides patients access to my front-office staff (Tricia) for appointment cancellations, insurance questions, medication refills, etc. We need to emphasize that this is NOT to be used for medication questions, therapy concerns, etc. Those need to be addressed to Dr. Flick via telephone or face-to-face meetings.

If you do want to e-mail Tricia regarding administrative/clerical/insurance questions, please be aware that e-mail is an inherently non-private process, with your message (and Tricia's response) passing through several different computers in transit, and security could be compromised at any link in this chain. With this in mind, if you still wish to proceed,

You may be wondering why you can't e-mail Dr. Flick directly...

Undoubtedly, the ability to e-mail me would provide benefits to patients and us. It provides 24 hour/day self-documenting communication that can be fit into each of our schedules when it's convenient. Unfortunately, most risk management advisors in our litigation-happy society are actively advising against e-mail communication in medicine, for several reasons:

Neither of us can be 100% certain of e-mail's security, from a patient confidentiality standpoint.

There's the possibility that a patient could misinterpret a symptom or side-effect as being "non-urgent" and question it via e-mail (with the attendant delay in response times), when in reality faster treatment is needed. Medical websites with e-mail links traditionally warn e-mail users to use the telephone--not e-mail--when they are having a serious side effect or symptom. Unfortunately, patients may not realize that a particular side-effect is serious. (A practical example is a rash. Rashes usually aren't a serious side effect, but with some medications, rashes can be life-threatening and need to be addressed immediately if they occur.)

There are no non-verbal clues in e-mail. Much of what I do is based on observation, and we lose that entire dimension in e-mail.

If you are having a problem and came to this page to e-mail us, please call us instead (812-469-2040).