ArticleJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2021
Physicians' electronic inbox work patterns and factors associated with high inbox work duration.
Article in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 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.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Comparative Study of Large Language Models, Human Experts, and Expert-Edited Large Language Models to Neuro-Ophthalmology Questions.Journal of neuro-ophthalmology : the official journal of the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society · 2025Trial
- Barriers and Enablers to Asynchronous Secure Messaging Use in Hospital-Based Ambulatory Specialty Clinics in Ontario, Canada: Convergent Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- The Inbox Problem: Standardized Protocols for Primary Care Teams to Address Patient Messages.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Optimizing Resident Experience in Continuity Clinic: Recommendations for Internal Medicine Residency Training-A Report from the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) and Association of Chiefs and Leaders of General Internal Medicine (ACLGIM) Hess Initiative Work Group on Learner Experience in Primary Care.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- A scoping review of studies on secure messaging through patient portals: persistent challenges and potential solutions.npj health systems · 2026Article
- After-Hours Use of the Electronic Health Record Among Medical and Surgical Specialists After Implementation of a System-Wide Integrated Clinical Information System in Alberta, Canada: Longitudinal Descriptive Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Evaluating ambient artificial intelligence documentation: effects on work efficiency, documentation burden, and patient-centered care.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2026Article
- Impact of Patient Communication Style on Agentic AI-Generated Clinical Advice in E-Medicine.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Taming the In-Basket-How Two Simple Tools Reduced Portal Message Volume in an Academic Internal Medicine Clinic.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- Utilization of Generative AI-drafted Responses for Managing Patient-Provider Communication.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- ChatGPT Can Provide Satisfactory Answers to Assessments of Mock Clinical Photos Following Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction and Rotator Cuff Repair.Arthroscopy, sports medicine, and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Development and evaluation of a lightweight large language model chatbot for medication enquiry.PLOS digital health · 2025Article
- Assessing ChatGPT's Educational Potential in Lung Cancer Radiotherapy From Clinician and Patient Perspectives: Content Quality and Readability Analysis.JMIR cancer · 2025Article
- A systematic review of early evidence on generative AI for drafting responses to patient messages.npj health systems · 2025Article
- The Gender Gap in EHR Workload: A Comparative Analysis of Primary Care Physician In Basket Usage.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Observational
- Burden of administrative responsibilities in primary care: Qualitative study.Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien · 2025Article
- Primary care staff members' experiences with managing electronic health record inbox messages.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 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
- Analyzing Physician In Basket Burden and Efficiency Using K-Means Clustering.Applied clinical informatics · 2025Article
- Reimagining clinical AI: from clickstreams to clinical insights with EHR use metadata.npj health systems · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesElectronic health record systems are increasingly used to send messages to physicians, but research on physicians' inbox use patterns is limited. This study's aims were to (1) quantify the time primary care physicians (PCPs) spend managing inboxes; (2) describe daily patterns of inbox use; (3) investigate which types of messages consume the most time; and (4) identify factors associated with inbox work duration. MATERIALS AND
methodsWe analyzed 1 month of electronic inbox data for 1275 PCPs in a large medical group and linked these data with physicians' demographic data.
resultsPCPs spent an average of 52 minutes on inbox management on workdays, including 19 minutes (37%) outside work hours. Temporal patterns of electronic inbox use differed from other EHR functions such as charting. Patient-initiated messages (28%) and results (29%) accounted for the most inbox work time. PCPs with higher inbox work duration were more likely to be female (P < .001), have more patient encounters (P < .001), have older patients (P < .001), spend proportionally more time on patient messages (P < .001), and spend more time per message (P < .001). Compared with PCPs with the lowest duration of time on inbox work, PCPs with the highest duration had more message views per workday (200 vs 109; P < .001) and spent more time on the inbox outside work hours (30 minutes vs 9.7 minutes; P < .001).
conclusionsElectronic inbox work by PCPs requires roughly an hour per workday, much of which occurs outside scheduled work hours. Interventions to assist PCPs in handling patient-initiated messages and results may help alleviate inbox workload.
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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.