Clinician Tip o' the Month - February 2024

Have you ever felt inundated by a flood of patient MyChart messages? You’re not alone.

This month’s tip is in response to a clinician’s request to address repetitive messages from some patients. The scenario is that the patient has complex medical issues and sends almost-daily messages to the clinician who has begun to feel overwhelmed. They find it stressful to validate and address the patient’s concerns while maintaining their busy schedule with so many other demands. I’m sure that most of us have found ourselves in this situation. 

In this specific case, the clinician works with some MAs who do screen some patient messages but not all messages. Based upon my observations and my own experience, having the MAs screen ALL of the clinician’s My Chart messages is extremely helpful, and it serves dual purposes: First, it distances the clinician from some of the anxiety being expressed by the patient. Second, the clinician can validate the patient’s concern while still setting boundaries. The patients learn they will not be corresponding directly with the clinician but with the MA staff who forward the concerns to the clinician (unless the clinician decides to change to that protocol in certain situations).

I’ve seen this method done quite successfully when the MA is prompt and compassionate with their follow through after communicating with the clinician. Moreover, its even better if the MA sends an initial quick reply to the patient that they will pass along the concern and that the clinician will provide a response by a given time range, such as end of the day or within 24 hours, or sooner if urgent intervention is needed.

This approach has the combined effect of addressing the patient’s medical concerns promptly and kindly while reducing clinician “message fatigue”. Additionally, it can allow the MA staff to grow professionally and be more satisfied in their role. One can “fine tune” this by providing parameters to the MAs about the types of things you want highlighted as urgent messages and by assigning specific MAs to individual clinicians if that fits the practice model. As clinicians, it is also helpful to set one or two times per day as your time to check your messages, and to stick to that pattern.

For more on this topic, this AMA article on EHR inbox management includes tips on sorting patient messages and including team members for patient communications.