Inbox message prioritization and management approaches in primary care.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Patient messaging to clinicians has dramatically increased since the pandemic, leading to informatics efforts to categorize incoming messages. We examined how message prioritization (as distinct from categorization) occurs in primary care, and how primary care clinicians managed their inbox workflows.

Materials and methods

Semi-structured interviews and inbox work observations with 11 primary care clinicians at MedStar Health. We analyzed interview and observation transcripts and identified themes and subthemes related to prioritization and inbox workflows.

Results

Clinicians widely reported that they did not prioritize messages due to time constraints and the necessity of attending to all messages, which made any prioritization purely additive to overall i

SUBMITTER: Apathy NC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11552621 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature