told the American Medical Association<\/a> that simply scheduling an appointment may be a better option for more involved questions. If something takes more than a single message to type out, odds are it would be better to call the doctor\u2019s office and schedule a visit.\n <\/p>\n\n It\u2019s also important for patients to know that messages sent through an online patient portal may not go straight to your doctor. Instead, they may first go through a kind of triage system, where they may be assessed by a medical assistant or a nurse before being answered or forwarded on to the intended recipient.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cPortal messages shouldn\u2019t be used for urgent needs,\u201d Tang told CNN in an email. \u201cThe patient should be comfortable with the idea of getting a response within 2 business days (though many will get responded to sooner). If the need is more urgent than that, then they should probably call.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The new study identified some writing style characteristics in messages that were more likely to get a response. It looked only at one health system, and it included only messages written in English, so its findings won\u2019t relate to every system or doctor\u2019s office. It also didn\u2019t track other methods to respond to patients, like a follow-up phone call instead of a portal response.\n <\/p>\n
\n The study found that the first sentence of a message may be one of the most important. Messages starting with \u201cDear Dr. (Last Name)\u201d were more likely to get the target clinician response, and messages that included the clinician\u2019s first name got even better response rates \u2014 nearly double as likely as those with no greeting at all.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf you start your message with \u2018Dear Dr. Tang,\u2019 we find that it\u2019s much more likely that Dr. Tang is ultimately the one who responds to you,\u201d Tang said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Messages with expressive punctuation also got better response rates from the target clinician \u2014 and the more expressive, the better. Multiple question marks and multiple exclamation marks secured better rates than single marks, which secured better rates than none.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt adds some like color to it, somehow, that seems to be treated differently,\u201d Tang said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Even in messages discussing what could be concerning health topics, the inclusion of positive sentiment \u2014 like that your condition is improving \u2014 seemed to improve response rate. But negative sentiment \u2013\u2014 such as expressing frustration or sadness \u2014 slightly decreased it.\n <\/p>\n
\n Many providers would suggest clear, concise messages from their patients. But in the study, longer messages were more likely it was to get passed along to the clinician they were intended for.\n <\/p>\n
\n Tang said this might be because these messages have more complexity or specificity, which is more likely to continue through portal triage and go to the doctor.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201c \u2018Long\u2019 is a proxy for \u2018complicated.\u2019 \u2018Complicated\u2019 is a proxy for \u2018escalate,\u2019 \u201d Tang said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consider two messages that might land in a doctor\u2019s patient portal: One is pretty brief: \u201cI\u2019ve had a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-870142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}