The work hiding inside "simple" patient requests

Inbound patient messages — whether a question about their health, a request for a prescription refill, or an appointment inquiry — often appear easy to resolve. However, a patient request may lead to a practice workflow involving multiple team members, systems, and decisions. Every extra step adds up quickly, whether that involves clarifying additional details with the patient or accessing multiple systems to resolve the request.

According to the American Medical Association, the average time a practice spends on a single request is 2.43 minutes.¹ With 100 requests a day amounting to 500 requests a week, clinical and administrative teams can find themselves spending more than 20 hours on patient communications, every single week. Over a year, this quickly turns into more than 1,000 hours of staff time.

Why patient messaging continues to grow

While the shift to a continuous care model has increased communication, higher expectations have been the primary reason for increased requests. Patients bring the expectations shaped by their experiences with other professionals and service providers to their healthcare experience. Patients now expect consumer-grade, always-on access to their care team.

As a result, the volume of messages has increased, adding to the administrative burden. MGMA found that 70% of medical practices reported an increase in portal messages, with only 1% seeing a decrease.² However, most healthcare organizations still use legacy communication tools that are bound by business hours.

The hidden cost of manual message management

Let's bring this challenge to life with an example. Imagine a seemingly straightforward message from a patient requesting a referral to a specialist because they have chronic pain from an injury. When front desk staff receive a digital message, they realize that the patient didn’t provide all the necessary information, so they leave the patient a voicemail, which turns into multiple rounds of phone tag.

After the team member gets the missing information, the front desk staff sends a message to the physician, who then accesses the patient’s records and determines that the patient needs additional testing before they can make a referral. Because of the delay, the patient sends additional messages, which add extra work for the administrative staff. After hearing back from the provider, the staff must again reach out to the patient to schedule the new appointment.

This back-and-forth takes a lot more staff time than the average request time of 2.43 minutes. Healthcare organizations of all sizes see these hidden costs multiplied across departments and locations throughout the organization. Because front desk staff often bear the brunt of inefficient workflows, the high administrative burden can contribute to burnout and stress.

The burden doesn't stop with front desk staff. Clinicians are also affected because they spend valuable clinical time reviewing charts, determining the appropriate next step, and responding to routine questions. Each interruption related to administrative work takes clinicians away from patient care.

Each of these roadblocks can delay responses to patient messages. Delays can frustrate patients, create a negative patient experience, and possibly even impact their care. Additionally, patients may send duplicate messages or call the office when they don’t hear back quickly, which adds more messages to the workflow and can create bottlenecks.

Four types of AI assistance that support — not replace — practice staff

AI-assisted triage and patient messaging make it possible to improve patient communication workflows, reducing the burden on patients, staff, and clinicians. AI-assisted triage uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand patient requests by analyzing a wide range of data, including the patient’s history and past interactions. The technology then determines the best next action for the request, such as answering automatically or sending the message to a human.

Here are four ways practices can use AI-assisted triage for patient requests to reduce manual work:

1. Use AI-assisted texting to reduce time-consuming phone calls

Phone calls can be time-consuming and cumbersome for both patients and staff. Instead, staff can more effectively manage the patient communication workflow by exchanging two-way text messages with patients through AI-enabled messaging.

Here is how AI-enabled messaging saves staff time and improves overall satisfaction:

• Patients communicate with providers from any location: The technology allows patients to connect with their provider at their preferred time, from their preferred location, and on their preferred device.
• Conversations seamlessly transition between devices: Patients can start the interaction via SMS and then move to a HIPAA-compliant secure web chat. Staff members can still see the entire conversation in a single staff view, which supports continuity of care and saves time moving between systems.

2. Let deterministic AI triage sort less urgent requests from critical requests

Manually triaging patient messages can take time and divert staff from higher-value tasks. Many questions received from patients are not urgent, such as needing a medication refill in two weeks or wanting to schedule an annual physical. However, others, such as a request for a referral due to increasing pain, are more urgent.

By using AI triage, urgent questions can be addressed more quickly:

• AI triage uses NLP to review messages: By identifying patterns and keywords, such as pain, the system determines which messages are urgent and escalates them to staff. As a result, patients receive the response and care they need in a timely manner, and staff can focus on addressing those needs instead of manually reviewing messages.  
• Structured protocols ensure consistency and efficiency: AI triage follows predetermined protocols to answer basic questions automatically, which saves significant staff time. Complex questions or those with private health information are then routed directly to the correct clinician or staff member, allowing patients to get accurate answers more quickly.

3. Use agentic AI to reduce the volume of routine patient questions before they reach your staff

Many routine patient questions arrive through phone calls, portal messages, and SMS, creating a complex workflow. Regardless of the channel, answering the same questions repeatedly consumes valuable staff time, often pulling them away from other tasks.

Here are ways agentic AI can improve efficiency:

• The AI agent responds to basic patient questions: By using practice-defined information, the agent answers many questions, such as office hours and directions, over text, allowing the team to focus on higher-level tasks. The agent then routes more complex questions to the right staff member, saving time otherwise spent on manual routing.  
• The AI agent can proactively reach out to patients: Healthcare organizations can use the agent to proactively reach out to patients, to schedule annual appointments or facilitate prescription refills. By anticipating needs, organizations may improve the patient experience while reducing front-desk calls and helping close care gaps.

4. Allow integrated AI tools to create a more complete patient record

Digital messaging systems don't always have complete context on patients' histories, making it challenging for clinicians and staff to fill in the gaps. Here is how AI patient communication tools help create complete and accurate patient records:

• AI creates conversation transcripts of all interactions: By recording all interactions between patients and staff, practices have a full record of the patient’s requests. The AI agent then gathers transcripts from all devices and saves the information to the patient record, which helps staff find specific conversations.
• The tool generates summaries of each interaction: Because staff members often don’t have the time to read complete transcripts, the AI agent uses NLP to generate summaries so staff can stay informed efficiently.

Supporting administrative staff with AI-assisted automation

The growth in patient messaging signals that patients are increasingly bringing a consumer mindset to their healthcare experience. However, healthcare organizations must create new processes and workflows to support staff and clinicians while providing an excellent patient experience.

By using AI-assisted patient communications, healthcare organizations can efficiently manage growing message volumes, reduce routine work, and quickly route requests to the right person. Organizations that proactively use this technology to reduce the administrative burden may give their teams more time to focus on delivering high-quality patient care.

Discover more ways to use AI to improve efficiency across your healthcare system.