单选题 Can the Internet help patients jump the line at the doctor's office? The Silicon Valley Employers Forum, a sophisticated group of technology companies, is launching a pilot program to test online "virtual visits" between doctors at three big local medical groups and about 6,000 employees and their families. The six employers taking part in the Silicon Valley initiative, including heavy hitters such as Oracle and Cisco Systems, hope that online visits will mean employees won't have to skip work to tend to minor ailments or to follow up on chronic conditions. "Which our long commutes and traffic, driving 40 miles to your doctor in your hometown can be a big chunk of time," says Cindy Conway, benefits director at Cadence Design Systems, one of the participating companies.
Doctors aren't clamoring to chat with patients online for free; they spend enough unpaid time on the phone. Only 1 in 5 has ever E-mailed a patient, and just 9 percent are interested in doing so, according to the research firm Cyber Dialogue. "We are not stupid," says Stirling Somers, executive director of the Silicon Valley employers group. "Doctors getting paid is a critical piece in getting this to work." In the pilot program, physicians will get $ 20 per online consultation, about what they get for a simple office visit.
Doctors also fear they'll be swamped by rambling E-mails that tell everything but what's needed to make a diagnosis. So the new program will use technology supplied by Healinx, an Alameda, Calif—— based start-up. Healinx's "Smart Symptom Wizard" questions patients and turns answers into a succinct message. The company has online dialogues for 60 common conditions. The doctor can then diagnose the problem and outline a treatment plan, which could include E-mailing a prescription or a face-to-face visit.
Can E-mail replace the doctor's office? Many conditions, such as persistent cough, require stethoscope to discover what's wrong-and to avoid a malpractice suit. Even Larry Bonham, head of one of the doctor's groups in the pilot, believes the virtual doctor's visits offer a "very narrow" sliver of service between phone calls to an advice nurse and a visit to the clinic.
The pilot program, set to end in nine months, also hopes to determine whether online visits will boost worker productivity enough to offset the cost of the service. So far, the Internet's record in the health field has been underwhelming. The experiment is "a huge roll of the dice for Healinx", notes Michael Barrett, an analyst at Internet consulting firm Forester Research. If the "Web visits" succeed, expect some HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations) to pay for online visits. If doctors, employers, and patients aren't satisfied, figure on one more E-health start-up to stand down.

单选题 The Silicon Valley employers promote the E-health program for the purpose of ______.
A. rewarding their employees
B. gratifying the local hospitals
C. boosting worker productivity
D. testing a sophisticated technology

单选题 What can be learned about the on-line doctors' visits?
A. They are a quite promising business.
B. They are funded by the local government.
C. They are welcomed by all the patients.
D. They are very much under experimentation.

单选题 Of the following people, who are not involved in the program?
A. Cisco System employees.
B. Advice nurses in the clinic.
C. Doctors at three local hospitals.
D. Oracle at three local hospitals.

单选题 According to Paragraph 2, doctors are ______.
A. reluctant to serve online for nothing
B. not interested in Web consultation
C. too tired to talk to the patients online
D. content with $ 20 paid per Web visit

单选题 "Smart Symptom Wizard" is capable of ______.
A. making diagnoses
B. producing prescriptions
C. profiling patients' illness
D. offering a treatment plan

单选题 It can be inferred from the passage that the future of online visits will mostly depend on whether ______.
A. the employers would remain confident in them
B. they could effectively replace office visits
C. HMOs would cover the cost of the service
D. new technologies would be available to improve the E-health project