Chances are that you are fielding far more emails from patients than you did before the COVID-19 public health emergency.
In-basket patient messages rose by 57% from 2019 to 2020, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. And the average time spent per patient portal message is 2.32 minutes, with an active, busy doctor getting 20–40 of these messages daily, according to Kevin D. Hopkins, MD, a physician adviser to the AMA’s practice-transformation unit.
So: Are physicians the only ones allowed to respond to those emails?
Some health care organizations may have rules that say that, but there is no federal regulation stating that only physicians can respond to patient portal messages, according to research AMA has curated. In fact, clerical and other clinical team members are often the most appropriate people in the practice to respond to patient messages depending on the nature of the request.
The AMA is spreading that message as part of a series of “Debunking Regulatory Myths” articles that provide clarification to physicians and their care teams in an effort to reduce the administrative and other burdens that divert doctors’ attention from the delivery of patient care.
How to minimize the burden
In addition to letting physicians know they don’t have to personally answer every patient email, the AMA has resources to help physicians tame their in-baskets.
Triaging and addressing messages that physicians don’t need to see can speed up how quickly the practice responds to patient emails, cut the time physicians spend in the EHR and help reduce physician burnout.
The AMA STEPS Forward® toolkit on patient-portal optimization helps physicians engage patients while minimizing the burden on the care team. The toolkit offers physicians and their staff five steps to help them optimize the patient portal, including:
- Setting patient expectations for patient portal use.
- Optimizing the office workflow for handling patient messages.
- Converting patient-portal message to billable encounters.
A separate STEPS Forward toolkit offers physician practices a systematic approach to reducing EHR inbox burden. That toolkit helps physicians reengineer their inboxes to reduce the low-value and unnecessary work that crosses their desks and boost efficiency through team-based care.
The toolkit helps reduce a primary source of physician burnout by guiding physicians through eight steps to make their inboxes more efficient, including:
- Developing an EHR inbox task force.
- Using audit log data to understand where changes can be made.
- Adopting a strategic framework to eliminate, automate, delegate and collaborate.
- Collaborating so someone is fully covering the inbox while a physician is taking time off.
From AI implementation to EHR adoption and usability, the AMA is making technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors—not a burden.
Earn CME credit
Learn more with the “AMA Debunking Medical Practice Regulatory Myths Learning Series,” which is available on AMA Ed Hub™. For each topic completed, a physician can receive CME for a maximum of 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.
Physicians who would like clarification about a potentially misinterpreted rule or regulation that has burdened them or their care team are encouraged to email the AMA’s experts, who will research the matter. If the concern turns out to be a bona fide regulation that unnecessarily diverts physicians’ time and focus away from their patients, the AMA can advocate for regulatory change.
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