A single world will make your doctor more likely to respond in the patient portal: study
Is your doctor leaving you on read?A new study suggests that the secret to getting your provider to respond may come down to something as simple as how you write your patient portal message.Researchers found that using one phrase in particular could significantly boost your chances of hearing back, especially from the person you were trying to reach.It’s a timely tip as more Americans turn to their phones and computers to manage their health.At least 12% of US adults now use secure online platforms or apps to message their doctors about appointments, test results and ongoing treatments.And those digital exchanges are on the rise.
Between 2020 and 2025, online portal messages sent to US providers more than doubled, jumping from an average of 2.2 messages per patient per year to 5.4.But sending a message doesn’t guarantee you’ll get one back.Roughly one-third of patient portal messages don’t receive a direct response, with rates even lower for some racial and ethnic groups.Eager to better understand why, researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health took a closer look.
The team analyzed more than 3.6 million medical advice requests sent through patient portals by 511,020 adults between 2021 and 2023.They used computer software to examine the wording and writing styles in nearly 990,000 English-language messages, then compared those patterns with how often patients got a response.The researchers found that messages that greeting the doctor by their last name got a reply about 39% of the time, compared with just 26% of those with no greeting at all.“One of the most important writing-style features was the message’s salutation,” Dr.Mitchell Tang, assistant professor of health policy and management, said in a press release.
“Simply beginning a message with ‘Dear Dr.Tang’ seemed to make it much more likely that Dr.
Tang would end up responding.”But the greeting wasn’t the only writing choice that appeared to play a rol...