ArticleThe Journal of surgical research2017
Complexity of medical decision-making in care provided by surgeons through patient portals.
Article in The Journal of surgical research, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Effects of a Theory-Based Patient Portal e-Learning Program for Older Adults with Chronic Illnesses.Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association · 2019Trial
- A scoping review of studies on secure messaging through patient portals: persistent challenges and potential solutions.npj health systems · 2026Article
- Development and evaluation of a lightweight large language model chatbot for medication enquiry.PLOS digital health · 2025Article
- Patient Portal Use Among Admitted Surgical Patients Following the 21st Century Cures Act.JAMA surgery · 2025Article
- Identifying Medication-Related Intents From a Bidirectional Text Messaging Platform for Hypertension Management Using an Unsupervised Learning Approach: Retrospective Observational Pilot Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Observational
- Assessing Patient Needs During Natural Disasters: Mixed Methods Analysis of Portal Messages Sent During Hurricane Harvey.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Article
- Classification and analysis of asynchronous communication content between care team members involved in breast cancer treatment.JAMIA open · 2021Article
- Classification of patient- and clinician-generated secure messages using a theory-based taxonomy.Health science reports · 2021Article
- Automating the Classification of Complexity of Medical Decision-Making in Patient-Provider Messaging in a Patient Portal.The Journal of surgical research · 2020Article
- Detecting Hypoglycemia Incidents Reported in Patients' Secure Messages: Using Cost-Sensitive Learning and Oversampling to Reduce Data Imbalance.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Article
- Care Delivered by Pediatric Surgical Specialties Through Patient Portal Messaging.The Journal of surgical research · 2019Article
- Article
- Common Consumer Health-Related Needs in the Pediatric Hospital Setting: Lessons from an Engagement Consultation Service.Applied clinical informatics · 2018Article
- A comparison of rule-based and machine learning approaches for classifying patient portal messages.International journal of medical informatics · 2017Article
- Long-term Patterns of Patient Portal Use for Pediatric Patients at an Academic Medical Center.Applied clinical informatics · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPatient portals are online applications that allow patients to interact with healthcare organizations and view information. Portal messages exchanged between patients and providers contain diverse types of communications, including delivery of medical care. The types of communications and complexity of medical decision-making in portal messages sent to surgeons have not been studied. MATERIALS AND
methodsWe obtained all message threads initiated by patients and exchanged with surgical providers through the Vanderbilt University Medical Center patient portal from June 1 to December 31, 2014. Five hundred randomly selected messages were manually analyzed by two research team members to determine the types of communication (i.e., informational, medical, logistical, or social), whether medical care was delivered, and complexity of medical decision-making as defined for outpatient billing in each message thread.
resultsA total of 9408 message threads were sent to 401 surgical providers during the study period. In the 500 threads selected for detailed analysis, 1293 distinct issues were communicated, with an average of 2.6 issues per thread. Medical needs were communicated in 453 message threads (90.6%). Further, 339 message threads (67.8%) contained medical decision-making. Overall complexity of medical decision-making was straightforward in 210 messages (62%), low in 102 messages (30%), and moderate in 27 messages (8%). No highly complex decisions were made over portal messaging.
conclusionsThrough patient portal messages, surgeons deliver substantial medical care with varied levels of medical complexity. Models for compensation of online care must be developed as consumer and surgeon adoption of these technologies increases.
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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.