Patient messages via Epic increased during COVID-19, raising burnout concerns

A analysis letter revealed this week within the Journal of the American Medical Affiliation Community Open discovered that physicians noticed a “small however sustained” improve in affected person message quantity throughout the first 15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

By analyzing greater than 10 million messages to 419 distinctive clinicians from 38 specialties throughout 141 follow websites, researchers from the Yale College Faculty of Drugs and the Mayo Clinic discovered that ambulatory physicians spent extra time of their inbox amidst the general public well being emergency.  

“Given the present doctor burnout disaster and the already recognized pandemic-related stressors and dangers to the doctor workforce, the extra inbox burden reported right here warrants further exploration to evaluate the character of pandemic-related medical recommendation requests and the generalizability of those findings,” wrote researchers.  

WHY IT MATTERS  

The analysis workforce relied on de-identified digital well being file metadata from Epic Methods’ Sign. They examined inbox messages despatched to physicians in a big ambulatory follow community in New England from March 2018 to June of this 12 months.

Between March 2020 and this June, the common whole messages per day elevated from 45.0 to 46.0 for major care physicians, from 29.3 to 32.0 messages per day for medical physicians, and from 16.6 to 23.3 messages per day for surgical physicians.  

Affected person-originated messages additionally elevated, with common numbers greater than doubling for major care physicians, medical physicians and surgical physicians.  

Unsurprisingly, time within the inbox additionally elevated throughout specialties – and researchers word that is seemingly an underestimation based mostly on how Sign tracks such exercise.  

On the similar time, the message improve didn’t displace affected person calls.  

“Per nationwide tendencies, throughout 2020 COVID months, month-to-month in-person visits decreased for all specialties … whereas telehealth visits elevated,” famous the researchers.    

“The variety of distinctive sufferers looking for care throughout the pandemic decreased for major care and medical specialties by means of June 2021 however elevated for surgical specialties in 2021,” they added.  

THE LARGER TREND  

Clinicians and assist workers have repeatedly cited affected person communications and patient-generated information as contributing to emotions of burnout. This, in flip, has led stakeholders to suggest new EHR workflows and redesigns to make the method extra intuitive.   

However the correlation between time spent within the EHR and job departure is probably extra advanced than initially hypothesized.  

Researchers in one other research revealed earlier this week discovered that physicians who spent much less time within the EHR had been extra more likely to go away their jobs.  

ON THE RECORD  

“With COVID-19 probably remaining a long-term endemic risk to public well being, the precedence to systematically tackle inbox burden earlier than the pandemic by means of workflow redesign, team-based inbox administration, and consideration of reimbursement for inbox-related work stays,” wrote researchers within the latest research in JAMA Community Open.

Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT Information.
Twitter: @kjercich
Electronic mail: [email protected]
Healthcare IT Information is a HIMSS Media publication.