Utilizing medical assistants to manage patient portal messages shown to support practice and physician efficiency

Many primary care clinicians directly receive messages from patients via electronic health records’ portal inboxes. The COVID-19 pandemic saw a rapid uptick in this trend. Data suggests that this additional work is linked to clinician burnout. Penn Family Care, a primary care group at Penn Medicine, instead routed incoming messages to certified medical assistants who had been taught how to distribute each message to the most appropriate physician. There was a 40% decrease in the number of messages going directly to primary care physicians, and both practice and clinician efficiency showed improvement after adopting this team-based care model.

Utilizing Medical Assistants to Manage Patient Portal Messages

Jennifer N. Lee, MD, et al

Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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