Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Corewell Health currently offers patients complimentary communication via MyChart, stating that it won't implement charges for messages, but will instead look at other avenues to manage the volume for its clinicians, Detroit Free Press reported Nov. 21.
Darryl Elmouchi, MD, chief operating officer at Corewell, told the publication that coping with the escalating volume of electronic messages through the MyChart portal has become progressively more demanding for the health system, with the number of messages surging threefold since the onset of the pandemic.
"COVID just caused it to explode," Dr. Elmouchi told the news outlet. "It definitely is a big convenience for individual patients to send a message to their doctors, just asking a question. And it becomes an increasing amount of work for doctors and nurses and other folks on the care team to try to respond to these in a timely manner."
Despite this, Dr. Elmouchi said Corewell won't move to charges like other big hospitals and health systems, as he sees the benefit in facilitating easy and accessible interactions with physicians and healthcare professionals for patients.
"We are constantly evaluating as the world changes and I can't say for certain that we won't at some point [bill for responses to MyChart questions] in the future, but our goal is to make it as easy as possible for patients and as easy as possible for the doctors," Dr. Elmouchi said. "That's something that we're constantly wrestling with."
Corewell is currently looking for other avenues to manage the volume. For example, Dr. Elmouchi has aspirations that AI will eventually be able to screen physician notes, prioritizing them based on urgency, and assisting with tasks such as transcriptions, effectively addressing substantial portions of physicians' time-consuming activities.
"I really firmly believe that over the next five to 10 years ... artificial intelligence and voice actuation tools and other things will hopefully make it a whole lot easier for us to practice," Dr. Elmouchi said.