Changes in Communication after Transition from Paging to Collaborative Text Messaging

We report the impact on communication in a tertiary care emergency department that migrated from a homegrown electronic health record with tightly integrated unidirectional paging system to one with bidirectional secure chat messaging. The goal was to examine how this transition impacted communication frequency among emergency medicine resident physicians. We hypothesized that for each resident's shift, the ease of initiating electronic conversations would lead to an increase in the number of unique conversations (threads), as well as an increase in the total number of messages received.

We conducted a retrospective observational study over two 6-month periods. The number of incoming pages residents received per shift in the preperiod was compared with the number of received secure chat messages as well as message threads per shift in the postperiod using nonparametric testing.

Residents received a median of 42 pages (IQR 27 to 62) per shift in the preperiod. They received a median of 107 secure chat messages (IQR 63 to 164) and participated in a median of 28 message threads per shift in the postperiod (IQR 18 to 41). The differences between each of these groups were statistically significant (Kruskal-Wallis P < .001).

The transition to collaborative text messaging functionality doubled the number of messages received by residents per shift, but with fewer discrete message threads. The findings suggest secure chat may increase overall message volume but consolidate communication into longitudinal conversations. Future work will measure the impact of these messages on clinical productivity, safety, as well as optimization of communication cadence and prioritization.