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

2024-05-28
(Press-News.org) 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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[Press-News.org] Utilizing medical assistants to manage patient portal messages shown to support practice and physician efficiency