The news: Researchers from the Mayo Clinic found that patient portal messages decreased after the health system began billing the interactions as e-visits, according to a study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Specifically, patient-initiated portal messages fell nearly 9% year-over-year in the six months after systemwide e-visit billing was implemented.
How we got here: Consumers and physicians communicated via patient portals in droves during the pandemic, when in-person appointments were heavily restricted.
But as other aspects of healthcare returned to normal post-pandemic, this patient behavior held steady, leaving already overburdened doctors with another time-consuming responsibility.
Our take: Patient portals can help democratize more affordable access to one’s physician, but at the cost of that clinician’s time. Including a billing disclaimer within a patient portal—as the Mayo Clinic did—is intended to deter consumers from abusing that privilege but could discourage them from asking their doctor important questions.
The study’s results also tell us that patients want to be active participants in managing their health. But they don’t want to be nickel-and-dimed for every portal message.
To benefit both providers and patients, a happy medium could be using AI chatbots to help with certain tasks like scheduling reminders and answering general questions.
This article is part of EMARKETER’s client-only subscription Briefings—daily newsletters authored by industry analysts who are experts in marketing, advertising, media, and tech trends. To help you finish 2024 strong, and start 2025 off on the right foot, articles like this one—delivering the latest news and insights—are completely free through January 31, 2025. If you want to learn how to get insights like these delivered to your inbox every day, and get access to our data-driven forecasts, reports, and industry benchmarks, schedule a demo with our sales team.