Doctors in the U.S. spend a lot of time on paperwork and other administrative tasks. This adds to their mental tiredness and burnout. According to the American Medical Association (AMA), doctors spend almost two hours on paperwork and electronic health records for every hour they spend with patients. This makes doctors tired and less happy at work, which can also affect how well they care for patients.
One big part of this extra work is patient portal messages. Doctors get many messages each week from patients with different questions, from simple ones like medicine refills to more serious health problems. A study at UC San Diego Health found doctors handle about 200 patient messages every week. Managing these messages along with their other duties leaves doctors little free time and makes their work harder.
It’s not just about the number of messages. These messages need careful and kind answers. Doctors have to answer quickly while also doing other medical tasks. This creates what experts call a “cognitive burden.” This means doctors have to think about a lot of information fast and still be accurate and caring, often using multiple computer systems.
New AI models and automation tools inside electronic health record (EHR) systems can help cut the time and mental effort doctors spend on patient messages. Research from UC San Diego Health studied AI-written patient message replies. They found AI did not make doctors answer faster but made longer and kinder drafts. Doctors could then edit these drafts before sending.
Doctors in the study said AI drafts helped reduce the mental work needed to write caring replies, especially after a long day. The AI gives a starting point to write from, which lets doctors get past “writer’s block” caused by tiredness. Doctors still review the messages, so the human part stays, but the writing is easier.
Using AI for patient messages also keeps privacy and honesty. AI messages say they are machine-made, and doctors always review and change them before sending. This helps patients trust the messages while letting doctors focus better on their work.
The AMA surveyed about 1,200 doctors and found 57% thought AI’s best help was cutting down paperwork by automation. Only 18% thought AI helped most by improving doctors’ medical work. The 2024 survey showed more doctors like AI, growing from 30% in 2023 to 35% this year. This means doctors trust AI more to reduce their workload.
Doctors say AI helps most with:
Health systems like Geisinger use over 110 automated tools, handling tasks like appointment cancellations and notifications. This gives doctors more free time.
At The Permanente Medical Group, AI scribes that write notes during patient visits save about one hour a day for each doctor. The Hattiesburg Clinic found a 13-17% rise in doctors’ job satisfaction after using AI to reduce paperwork stress. This shows that AI reducing admin tasks helps doctors feel better at work.
Adding AI communication tools to healthcare workflows is important to get the most benefit and reduce doctors’ workload. Workflow automation for communication includes:
By automating these routine messages and paperwork, doctors get more time for hard medical decisions and seeing patients. AI also writes longer, detailed replies that better handle patient concerns with kindness and clarity.
Besides messaging, AI helps doctors make clinical decisions to reduce mental strain. NAOMI (Neural Assistant for Optimized Medical Interactions) is one such AI system. It helps doctors with tasks like triage, diagnosis, and treatment, especially when resources are limited such as in after-hours care.
NAOMI works on three main ideas:
By lowering decision fatigue and admin work, NAOMI helps doctors work better and reduces burnout risk. This AI system offers a way to improve efficiency and fairness in healthcare, especially during times when regular offices are closed.
Doctors and patients accept AI in medical communication when it is clear, high quality, and includes doctors’ review. Surveys show 68% of doctors are open to AI that cuts clerical work if it does not harm patient care. Patients trust AI more when they know their doctor checks the AI messages first. For example, a Mount Sinai project with doctor-checked AI triage got 85% patient satisfaction.
Still, a 2024 Pew Research poll found 60% of Americans feel uneasy about AI making medical decisions. This drops to 35% when a doctor reviews AI messages. This shows it is important to keep a “human in the loop” to keep trust and accuracy.
Doctors say AI replies must sound kind and understanding. If AI messages seem cold or clinical, patients might feel worse. AI should be designed to show care and understanding where it matters.
Medical practice managers and owners in the U.S. can gain these benefits by using AI communication tools:
These reasons show why healthcare IT managers and leaders should study AI tools that work well with their EHR systems for easy use.
Even though AI has many benefits, healthcare organizations must watch out for some problems:
A careful and open plan with constant feedback from doctors is needed for good results when using AI.
AI communication tools are becoming important in U.S. medical practices to help reduce doctor burnout caused by mental overload from patient messages and paperwork. AI can write kind message drafts, help sort important messages, and support clinical decisions. This makes workflows more efficient while keeping the human touch in care. Medical practice leaders and IT managers should look at these tools carefully, focusing on good integration, honesty, and doctor review to get the best results for both doctors and patients.
The study focuses on the use of generative AI to draft compassionate replies to patient messages within Epic Systems electronic health records, aiming to enhance physician-patient communication.
The study found that while AI-generated replies did not reduce physician response time, they did lower the cognitive burden on doctors by providing empathetic drafts that physicians could edit.
The senior author is Christopher Longhurst, MD, who is also the executive director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation.
It evaluated the quality of communication and the cognitive load on physicians, suggesting that AI can help mitigate burnout by facilitating more thoughtful responses.
AI is seen as a collaborative tool because it assists physicians by generating drafts that incorporate empathy, allowing doctors to respond more effectively to patient queries.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented rise in digital communications between patients and providers, creating a demand for timely responses which many physicians struggle to meet.
Generative AI helps by drafting longer, empathetic responses to patient messages, which can enhance the quality of communication while reducing the initial writing workload for physicians.
A greater response length typically indicates better quality of communication, as physicians can provide more comprehensive and empathetic replies to patients.
The study suggests a potential paradigm shift in healthcare communication, highlighting the need for further analysis on how AI-generated empathy impacts patient satisfaction.
UC San Diego Health, alongside the Jacobs Center for Health Innovation, is testing generative AI models to explore safe and effective applications in healthcare since May 2023.
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