Hospitals and health systems have begun seeing that their physicians have little time during work hours to reply to patient messages, leaving them to attend to this duty after work during "pajama time." This has caused some organizations to start charging for some of these messages so they can lower the volume their staff receives — but is this working?
Jay Holmgren, PhD, researcher for healthcare IT at the University of California San Francisco, looked into the matter and found that the charges haven't stopped the influx of messages clinicians receive.
According to Dr. Holmgren's research, physicians only bill for about 3 percent of messages they receive and report that they are still dealing with a high volume of emails.
Dr. Holmgren also said that the fees have only led to a 2 percent decline in the number of messages.
But San Francisco-based UCSF Health, which started billing for MyChart in November 2021, said the charges have begun to lower the amount of messages its physicians have been receiving.
According to the health system, patient message threads and overall messages dropped slightly, with researchers stating that the cause "may be attributable to awareness of the possibility of being billed."
Still, UCSF Health reported that its clinicians only charged for about 2 percent of message threads.