Overview

• Primary care physicians face burnout driven by a surge in patient portal messages that began during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Women physicians are 60% more likely than male counterparts to report portal messages requiring extra clinical assessment and 76% more likely to link them to burnout.
• Introduction of 20-minute 'PACE' slots in each clinic session improved physicians’ control over in-basket workflow without reducing patient visits or billing metrics.
• A team-based routing framework cut messages per physician by 16%, reduced duplicate internal messages by 62%, and lowered direct messages to doctors by 26%.
• All interventions operate within existing resources, offering scalable evidence-based strategies to inform healthcare policy, workforce planning, and patient engagement.