• Richa Bundy, Adam Moses, Elisabeth Stambaugh, Paschal Stewart, Lauren Witek, Lindsey Carlasare, Gary Rosenthal, Christine Sinsky, and Ajay Dharod.
• Informatics and Analytics (I&A), Department of Internal Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, USA. rbundy@wakehealth.edu.
• J Gen Intern Med. 2024 Oct 1; 39 (13): 243224372432-2437.

BackgroundPhysicians are experiencing an increasing burden of messaging within the electronic health record (EHR) inbox. Studies have called for the implementation of tools and resources to mitigate this burden, but few studies have evaluated how these interventions impact time spent on inbox activities.ObjectiveExplore the association between existing EHR efficiency tools and clinical resources on primary care physician (PCP) inbox time.DesignRetrospective, cross-sectional study of inbox time among PCPs in network clinics affiliated with an academic health system.ParticipantsOne hundred fifteen community-based PCPs.Main MeasuresInbox time, in hours, normalized to eight physician scheduled hours (IB-Time8).Key ResultsFollowing adjustment for physician sex as well as panel size, age, and morbidity, we observed no significant differences in inbox time for physicians with and without message triage, custom inbox QuickActions, encounter specialists, and message pools. Moreover, IB-Time8 increased by 0.01 inbox hours per eight scheduled hours for each additional staff member resource in a physician's practice (p = 0.03).ConclusionsPhysician inbox time was not associated with existing EHR efficiency tools evaluated in this study. Yet, there may be a slight increase in inbox time among physicians in practices with larger teams.© 2024. The Author(s).

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