Secure clinical messaging promises to improve communications between healthcare providers and promote continuity of care, but office-based physicians are starting to get overwhelmed with e-mail, just like the rest of us. It’s a particularly serious problem for primary care physicians, according to a research letter published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston examined electronic logs of messages to physicians at three large medical practices in Texas. They found that primary care doctors received a mean of 76.9 notifications per day through the electronic health record’s messaging system. About 20 percent were related to test results.
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