ArticleJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2017
An analysis of patient-provider secure messaging at two Veterans Health Administration medical centers: message content and resolution through secure messaging.
Article in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed.
- Language complexity of patient-physician chat communication on hypertension control: results of the cluster-randomised PIA study.BMC medicine · 2025Trial
- Impact of Patient-Clinical Team Secure Messaging on Communication Patterns and Patient Experience: Randomized Encouragement Design Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Trial
- Defining and Assessing Empathic Communication in Patient Portal Secure Messages: Adapted Coding Framework Development Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- A Secure User Interface for Preclinical Evaluation of AI in Patient Portal Message Management: Tutorial.JMIR medical informatics · 2026Article
- A scoping review of studies on secure messaging through patient portals: persistent challenges and potential solutions.npj health systems · 2026Article
- Physicians' Experiences Using Secure Messaging for Diabetes Management: A Qualitative Study.JMIR diabetes · 2025Article
- Secure Messages, Video Visits, and Burnout Among Primary Care Providers in the Veterans Health Administration: National Survey Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- High Users of Primary Care Secure Messaging in the Veterans Health Administration.Annals of family medicine · 2025Article
- Patient-Health Care Professional Communication via a Secure Web-Based Portal in Severe Mental Health Conditions: Qualitative Analysis of Secure Messages.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Dissemination, adaptation, and uptake of patient-facing materials to improve care coordination in primary care.PEC innovation · 2025Article
- Detecting emergencies in patient portal messages using large language models and knowledge graph-based retrieval-augmented generation.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Secure messaging telehealth billing in the digital age: moving beyond time-based metrics.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Discussions of Cannabis Over Patient Portal Secure Messaging: Content Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Has telemedicine come to fruition? Parents' and pediatricians' perceptions and preferences regarding telemedicine.Pediatric research · 2024Article
- Clinician and staff experiences with frustrated patients during an electronic health record transition: a qualitative case study.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Relationship Between Patient Portal Tool Use and Medication Adherence and Viral Load Among Patients Living with HIV.Journal of general internal medicine · 2024Article
- Patient Portal Use and Risk of Readmissions in Decompensated Cirrhosis: Retrospective Study.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Perceptions of and Preferences for Telemedicine Use Since the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-Sectional Survey of Patients and Physicians.JMIR human factors · 2023Article
- Use of the Veterans Health Administration online patient portal among Veterans with spinal cord injuries and disorders.The journal of spinal cord medicine · 2023Article
- Clinical Validity of the PROMIS Healthcare Engagement 8-Item Short Form.Journal of general internal medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveWe sought to understand how patients and primary care teams use secure messaging (SM) to communicate with one another by analyzing secure message threads from 2 Department of Veterans Affairs facilities.
methodsWe coded 1000 threads of SM communication sampled from 40 primary care teams.
resultsMost threads (94.5%) were initiated by patients (90.4%) or caregivers (4.1%); only 5.5% were initiated by primary care team members proactively reaching out to patients. Medication renewals and refills (47.2%), scheduling requests (17.6%), medication issues (12.9%), and health issues (12.7%) were the most common patient-initiated requests, followed by referrals (7.0%), administrative issues (6.5%), test results (5.4%), test issues (5.2%), informing messages (4.9%), comments about the patient portal or SM (4.1%), appreciation (3.9%), self-reported data (2.8%), life issues (1.5%), and complaints (1.5%). Very few messages were clinically urgent (0.7%) or contained other potentially challenging content. Message threads were mostly short (2.7 messages), comprising an average of 1.35 discrete content types. A substantial proportion of issues (24.2%) did not show any evidence of being resolved through SM. Time to response and extent of resolution via SM varied by message content. Proactive SM use by teams varied, but was most often for test results (32.7%), medication-related issues (21.8%), medication renewals (16.4%), or scheduling issues (18.2%).
conclusionsThe majority of messages were transactional and initiated by patients or caregivers. Not all content categories were fully addressed over SM. Further education and training for both patients and clinical teams could improve the quality and efficiency of SM communication.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.