Physician response time when communicating with patients over the Internet

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Communication
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Growing patient demand for accessible health services via electronic communication.
• Health authorities recognize electronic communication as a means to enhance healthcare delivery.
• Physician perspectives on integrating electronic communication into clinical practice are varied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the time physicians dedicate to responding to patient electronic messages.
• To identify if specific patient questions require disproportionately more physician time.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 1113 electronic patient-physician messages from 14 physicians across 7 medical offices.
• Measurement of patient question length, physician answer length, and time spent by physicians responding.
• Statistical analysis to determine the correlation between message length and response time.

Main Results:

• Physicians spent an average of 2.3 minutes (median 2 minutes) per electronic message response.
• Patient question length had a negligible impact on physician response time; a threefold increase in question length resulted in only an 18% increase in response time.
• Response times for the shortest 25% of questions averaged 2.1 minutes, compared to 2.4 minutes for the longest 25%.

Conclusions:

• Electronic communication offers potential clinical utility by demonstrating time-saving benefits for physicians.
• The efficiency of physician responses suggests electronic channels are a viable tool for patient-provider communication.
• Findings support the integration of electronic communication to improve healthcare access and efficiency.