An Oregon health system took a team approach to answer patient portal messages to cut down the time primary care physicians there spent responding to them.
Salem (Ore.) Health created a new role in the summer of 2022 to focus on MyChart messages, according to an April 3 EpicShare article. Family nurse practitioner Jane Birdsong spent half her time providing virtual primary care, a quarter of her time responding to patient messages, and another 25 percent improving messaging workflows.
Salem Health also created a triage pool for messages, developed automated responses for common billing and scheduling questions, and set aside a “power hour” just to process refill request messages, the story noted. The new system reduced the number of messages going to primary care physicians by more than a third, cutting an average of seven minutes of after-work time daily.
