Patient-Physician Messaging by Race, Ethnicity, Insurance Type, and Preferred Language

Are there differences in the patterns of care teams' responses to asynchronous patient portal messages by patient demographic characteristics?In this cross-sectional study of 341 836 patients who sent asynchronous patient portal messages to their primary care physician, the prevalence of receiving a response from any care team member within 1 business day was lower for Black and Hispanic patients compared with White patients, dual-eligible patients compared with commerically insured patients, and Spanish-preferring compared with English-preferring patients.These findings suggest that there were significant differences in the responsiveness of primary care teams to asynchronous patient-portal messages by race and ethnicity, insurance type, and language.

Corresponding Author: Lisa S. Rotenstein, MD, MBA, MSc, University of California at San Francisco, 10 Koret Way, Room 321, San Francisco, CA 94130 (lisa.rotenstein@ucsf.edu).

Link to the article in your story

We encourage you to link out to this article in your story using the link below. It includes an access token that will give free access to the article for your readers up to one year after publication. (The link will be live after the article publishes and embargo is lifted.)

Please see the article for additional information, including full author list, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Need more information? Contact us.