The average physician handles hundreds of inbox messages each week — not just from patients, but from pharmacies, labs, referral systems, prior auth tools, and EHR-generated alerts.
And it’s taking a toll.
According to the AMA and Stanford research, inbox overload is now one of the top 3 contributors to physician burnout. What’s worse — up to 60% of inbox messages are non-urgent, administrative, or system-generated noise.Yet inbox burden isn’t a necessary evil. It’s a solvable operational challenge.
A growing number of practices are implementing team-based inbox triage models — reassigning messages to medical assistants, nurses, and care coordinators based on priority and role.
The result? A study published in Health Affairs found this approach led to a 24% reduction in physician inbox time, with no drop in patient responsiveness or satisfaction.Additional interventions making an impact:
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Centralizing refill and results workflows using protocols
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Auto-routing low-risk messages to non-physician staff
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Reducing EHR-generated messages by auditing unnecessary alerts
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Implementing clear escalation pathways to reduce duplication
At Alteris Healthcare, we’ve been benchmarking these strategies across practices — and the results are clear: In practices with optimized message delegation, physicians spend 30–40% less time in their inbox per week. That translates directly to increased capacity, lower burnout, and improved retention.
Your inbox policy is your burnout policy.
And workflow redesign — not more resilience training — is the path forward.If your organization is exploring ways to optimize provider time and reduce attrition, we’d be happy to share what’s working across the practices we partner with.
Let’s build smarter systems, together.
