Physician burnout is a serious problem in U.S. healthcare today. Recent studies show that many doctors feel very tired emotionally (38.8%), detached from their work (27.4%), or have symptoms of burnout (44.0%). These problems cause stress and make it hard for doctors to give good patient care. A big cause of burnout is all the extra paperwork, especially with electronic health records (EHR) and patient messages.
Doctors spend a large part of their workweek writing notes and answering patient questions. For example, at UC San Diego Health, doctors get about 200 patient messages each week. These messages grew a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase makes it hard for doctors to reply quickly while still being kind and detailed. This extra work adds to mental strain — the effort doctors need to manage many tasks and information. It can cause tiredness, stress, and less job happiness.
Burnout also costs a lot of money. When doctors quit or work less because of burnout, U.S. healthcare loses around $4.6 billion every year. For medical office leaders, these losses mean money gone and the difficulty of hiring and training new staff.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to help with these problems by automating and supporting tasks in healthcare. Unlike simple machines, AI can look at a lot of data and create helpful outputs like message drafts, coding help, and reminders for patients.
One example is at UC San Diego Health. Since May 2023, they used AI tools inside their Epic electronic health record system to help write replies to patient messages. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Network Open found that while AI did not make doctors reply faster, it did lower mental strain by giving well-written, kind messages to start from. This helps doctors who feel tired or stuck when writing replies, especially at the end of a busy day. It lets them focus on making care decisions while using AI message drafts as a base.
Dr. Christopher Longhurst, a director at the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation and lead author of the study, said AI messaging helps doctors handle many patient messages. By giving a starting point for replies, AI lowers the mental effort needed to write kind responses. This improves how doctors communicate with patients. Dr. Marlene Millen added that AI’s help in writing messages, even after long days, might stop burnout from getting worse.
AI can also write longer, kinder messages that make patients feel better cared for. Even if replies are not faster, the quality and honesty improve. This is important to keep trust and good relationships between patients and doctors.
AI is also changing how healthcare offices work by automating routine administrators’ jobs. This is important for healthcare leaders and IT managers who want to work more efficiently and lower doctor workload.
Many parts of burnout come from filling out forms, coding, making referrals, and checking insurance. AI tools are being used more to help with these tasks:
Dave Henriksen, a health technology expert, said using AI automation and smart workflow systems helps keep doctors well and saves money for healthcare groups by reducing extra administration.
Healthcare leaders and IT staff in the U.S. need to understand and use AI tools. Patient messages and documentation keep growing. Without help, doctors will burn out more and staff will quit more.
Using AI well means fitting it into current health IT systems like Epic or Cerner. Staff must be taught to use AI helpers for message writing and other support. It is also important to tell patients when a message is AI-generated. This keeps trust in the system.
IT teams play a big role in making sure patient data stays private under laws like HIPAA. They also watch AI tools to keep them safe and effective. Leaders must think about the costs and benefits of AI across their whole operation. AI can save money by cutting staff turnover and improving care quality.
Using AI may lower major stress factors that cause doctor burnout. Automating repeated tasks and creating message drafts lets doctors spend less mental energy on routine work. Although AI does not always make replies faster, it eases the pressure of starting every message or note on their own. This allows doctors to focus more on medical decisions and quality care.
AI workflow helpers also manage referrals, insurance checks, and documents. This help shifts focus from paperwork to patient care.
This new way matches the need for quick, kind patient communication as digital demands grow. Before the pandemic, digital messages were manageable. Now there are many more. Without AI, doctors face too much work. AI acts as a partner, not a replacement. It helps doctors keep working without hurting their mental health.
AI tools are becoming important to lower doctors’ mental workload and reduce burnout in the U.S. Medical leaders, owners, and IT managers should think about using AI for messaging, coding, care gap checks, and workflow automation. These tools can help improve doctor well-being, patient care quality, and healthcare system efficiency at a time when demands and staffing problems are growing.
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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