A Cost Analysis of All-Staff Emails in an Australian Hospital Network (CASH Study)

Written communication has changed dramatically in the computer era. Email use has exploded in the last three decades, from the inter-individual level through to mass dissemination. In the workplace, it has become the default mode of communication despite very limited critical appraisal. Specifically in the healthcare setting, its utility as a communication strategy for broadcasting information has barely been examined. The aim of this study was to quantify the use of all-staff emails (ASE) across a public hospital and its umbrella Hospital and Health Service (HHS).

An audit of one year's ASE was performed to determine the number, word count and readability using validated metrics. The median was used as a reference text. Seventy five randomly selected volunteers from the five occupation groups in the health service were timed whilst reading the reference text to enable an estimate of time and financial cost.

Five hundred and six ASE were identified, with a median length of 622 words (95% CI 570 to 694). The median Flesch-Kincaid (FK) Grade score was 8.9 (95% CI 8.8 to 9.1). The calculated predicted salary costs if all staff read all ASE in 1 year were AU$6 116 386.47 (range AU$3 441 365.32 to AU$13 424 704.98) at the hospital level and AU$14 555 209.62 (range AU$8 258 984.03 to AU$31 778 109.75) at the HHS level.

A modest reduction in annual ASE burden could result in considerable savings for hospitals and hospital health services, which could be reinvested into patient care, procedures and staff wellbeing. Further research would improve the limited understanding of the impacts of ASE and build an evidence base for how to optimise their use.