Concerns abound regarding the workload created by electronic health records (EHRs), but little attention has been paid to the relationship between physicians’ well-being and the volume and sources of in-basket messages they receive.
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According to a recent paper in Health Affairs, “in a survey, 36 percent of the physicians reported burnout symptoms, and 29 percent intended to reduce their clinical work time in the upcoming year. Receiving more than the average number of system-generated in-basket messages was associated with 40 percent higher probability of burnout and 38 percent higher probability of intending to reduce clinical work time.”
Reference
1. Tai-Seale M, Dillon EC, Yang Y, et al. Physicians’ Well-Being Linked To In-Basket Messages Generated By Algorithms In Electronic Health Records. Health Aff. 2019 Jul. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05509.