The pandemic fundamentally transformed healthcare delivery, shifting toward virtual care and redefining patient-provider interactions. With care moving online, practices were able to optimize accessibility, safety, and timely care delivery. Moreover, digital communication tools, especially patient portals, enabled patients to connect with providers, check test results, schedule appointments, and receive follow-up care.
However, this flexibility and accessibility of online healthcare also brought a new set of challenges. While patient portals and digital tools undoubtedly streamline access to care, they also lead to an influx of patient messages that need prompt responses, substantially increasing physician workload.
A study highlights that patient portal messages surged 157% of their pre-pandemic average, leaving providers struggling to keep up. Ironically, U.S. clinicians receive nearly three times as many inbox messages as their counterparts in non-U.S. countries.
Timely responses enhance patient experience, but a workflow that directs all messages to the physician's inbox can lead to inefficiency and burnout.
Is there a better way?
Yes, with accurate message labeling, triaging, and effective workload delegation, you can streamline patient message management without overwhelming providers.
Patient-provider messaging is a cornerstone of modern healthcare, strengthening trust, enhancing patient experience, and influencing care outcomes. Since the pandemic, patient portal use has surged, with about three in five individuals accessing it in 2022. The increased demand is straining physicians, affecting their efficiency and productivity.
Primary care physicians (PCPs) spend an average of 52 minutes each workday and about 19 minutes outside the regular work hours managing their inboxes. Ironically, many of these messages don’t require a physician’s expertise.
The patient portal is a vital healthcare tool, but here's the catch: the volume of messages it generates — appointment requests, test results inquiries, medication refill requests, and simple questions — often overwhelms physicians' inboxes. Many of these tasks do not require the expertise of a physician and can be efficiently managed by administrative staff, medical assistants, or nurses. Lightening this load helps reduce burnout and enables physicians to dedicate more time to patient care, enhancing care quality.
Electronic health records (EHRs) are like a double-edged sword in healthcare. On the one hand, they serve as a powerful tool, cutting through data silos and making patient information accessible at the click of a button — enhancing the quality, safety, and efficiency of care. On the other hand, this same tool places a significant clerical burden on physicians, often bogging them down with a constant stream of inbox messages.
So, how do you manage these copious messages?
By cutting down the volume?
But that would compromise the quality of care and impact patient satisfaction.
The strategy goes beyond merely reducing the number of messages. Effective inbox management ensures that each message is delivered to the right person and receives an accurate response, all without adding unnecessary stress to the provider. Here's a balanced approach that helps keep both patients and providers satisfied.
The first step in effective patient message management is organizing messages by category and labeling them appropriately. Labeling helps differentiate high-value communication from low-value and ensures that each message is directed to the right team member, making responses quick and efficient. Patient portal messages commonly fall into the following categories:
Labeling messages simplifies triaging and accelerates response times. Your team can quickly route messages to the right person, address urgent queries promptly, and efficiently manage administrative questions through text messages or phone calls.
Over one-third of patient messages contain low-value communications. But you can’t risk urgent issues slipping through the cracks in a busy inbox. Triaging prioritizes messages, directing each message to the appropriate team member and flags critical concerns for prompt attention. This routing also ensures providers only receive messages that require their direct expertise.
Have a medical assistant (MA) or nurse practitioner screen the messages. Primary care practices often have a better MA staffing ratio, making them a valuable resource. Alternatively, your IT staff can streamline the triaging process by setting up automated workflows, organizing message categories, and implementing efficient communication tools.
Route messages related to appointment scheduling and test results to the administrative team. Only those messages that require the expertise or consent of the physician should end up in their inbox.
Establish protocols to escalate urgent messages that require prompt action to the physicians or clinical staff. If the primary responder is unavailable, set up backups or on-call staff to handle priority cases, maintaining continuity of care. Establish clear guidelines for triaging urgent messages to streamline response times and reduce confusion.
Not every message that lands in the inbox needs a physician’s input. Medical assistants can address most messages, such as prescription refills, questions about dosage, side effects, or treatment plans. Leveraging their expertise frees up physician time.
Likewise, your administrative team can handle messages related to billing, appointment scheduling, or insurance coverage. Routing these messages directly to administrative staff significantly reduces physician inbox clutter and ensures patients receive timely responses from the right team members.
Set clear guidelines to clarify the type of messages that should be directed to each team. Outline specific roles for MAs, nurses, and admin staff to ensure clarity and accountability. Conduct training sessions and regularly review protocols to ensure everyone is on the same page.
The above strategies help manage physician workload, but to maximize efficiency and productivity without adding more manual tasks, AI is your best ally.
AI’s natural language processing algorithms and machine learning capabilities can automatically categorize, label, and sort messages to the appropriate roles before they reach the physician's inbox. By training AI to recognize keywords and categorize messages accurately, practices can ensure that urgent and complex cases are prioritized, enabling faster response times for potentially acute and emergent situations.
Moreover, AI can generate draft responses for common clinical inquiries, such as advice on managing cold symptoms or overcoming medication side effects. Physicians can review and edit these drafts before sending them to the patient, ensuring accuracy while saving time.
Furthermore, AI-driven analytics allow practices to track message volume, message trend, response times, and workload distribution across the team. These insights help identify patterns, enabling practices to adjust protocols, optimize staffing, and improve patient communication efficiency.
Having sufficient hands in your practice is a valuable asset. Unfortunately, given the current scenario of staff shortages and increased demand in the healthcare industry, optimizing headcount can feel like a distant dream. Nevertheless, virtual assistants offer a practical solution to bridge this gap.
GlacePhoneSmart, Glenwood's AI tool, can handle tasks such as booking or rescheduling appointments, answering billing questions, providing account balances, and notifying patients about lab results. Moreover, if a patient wants to speak to a care team member, the AI assistant sends the relevant message as an internal notification, ensuring efficient communication and quick follow-up. At Glenwood, we aim to shoulder your practice burdens.
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Appoint a virtual assistant today to help manage patient messages and optimize your practice's workflow!
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