Introduction
Electronic messaging in electronic health records (EHRs) is a major source of physician burnout. Prior studies found significant time spent answering messages and associated stress. Strategies to address this challenge include triaging messages by care teams, charging fees, and using templated responses. Published work suggested that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) could potentially extend this toolset by drafting replies. UC San Diego Health is among the first health systems to collaborate with an EHR vendor (Epic Systems) to implement GenAI natively in the EHR. Timely tests of AI’s applications in medicine are urgently needed. We evaluated how implementing GenAI may be associated with patient-physician communication.
