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How to clean up and manage your EHR inbox

Effective EHR inbox management is the key to harnessing your EHR’s full potential.

  • Current Version – Mar 30, 2025
    Written by: Jean Lee
    Changes: This article was updated to include the most relevant and up-to-date information available.
cleaning up EHR inbox

Key Takeaways

  • Effective EHR inbox management prevents message overload and missed communications.
  • Organizing messages with filters and labels streamlines workflow.
  • Regular maintenance and delegation ensure timely responses and reduce clinician burnout.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have revolutionized patient information management in healthcare. These systems consolidate administrative and clinical data, enhancing decision-making, patient care, and clinical outcomes. Tebra’s 2024 EHR survey reveals a staggering 110% increase in EHR adoption among United States office-based physicians since 2008, with 88% now using these systems.

However, inbox burden is a difficult reality for many providers and their clinical teams. While EHRs centralize crucial information, poor management can lead to clutter, missed details, delayed responses, provider alert fatigue and compromised patient care.

Managing EHR inbox messages effectively is the key to harnessing your platform’s full potential. Read on for our expert tips and a practical checklist to help you streamline your EHR inbox, optimize workflows, and enhance patient care.

Looking for an EHR that won’t slow you down? This free guide helps you find one that supports your care—not your paperwork.

Understanding the importance of an organized EHR inbox

EHR systems are a fantastic way to optimize workflows, but each is only as good as your vigilance and organization. An organized EHR inbox is crucial for several reasons:

Impact on patient care

By consolidating patient records and clinical data into a central hub, healthcare providers and care team members can easily access patient information. This, in turn, helps them provide timely and accurate information to patient inquiries. Moreover, centralized access to patient records can reduce medical errors by improving the accuracy of medical documentation

Efficiency and time management benefits

In a study that the American Medical Association (AMA) funded, conducted between November 2021 and April 2022, researchers found that inbox work took ambulatory physicians 1.1 hours and 0.8 hours per every 8 hours of patient care, respectively. The same study found that primary care physicians spend 50% more time managing their inbox compared to the overall average.

A clutter-free EHR inbox can not only free up physician time for patient care, but also help improve team-based collaboration, eliminate redundancies, and reduce physician burnout.

Common EHR inbox management challenges

As much as any EHR system can do, managing inbox work presents unique and significant challenges:

  • High message volume: Any clinician likely experiences daily inundation. Messages are usually patient inquiries, lab test results, and internal communications, and they typically run the gamut from urgent messages to irrelevant notifications.
  • Duplication: Like any inbox, duplicate or irrelevant messages can contribute to clutter, making it harder to find and ultimately address the most important messages of the lot.
  • Prioritization and triage: With hundreds of messages landing in your EHR inbox every day, it can be hard to think big picture. Determining which messages require immediate attention and which can be addressed later may not always be easy, but it is crucial.
  • Time constraints: A full patient roster is great, but there are only so many hours in a day — leaving clinicians with only a small amount of time to manage their inboxes. 

Step-by-step guide to cleaning up your EHR inbox

Use filters and labels 

The organization and maintenance of your EHR inbox can start long before the messages begin pouring in. Here, we’re talking about setting up and using the filtering and labeling features of your EHR system to automatically sort incoming messages into predefined categories (i.e., care team and staff messages, refill requests, patient portal messages, and lab results).

When setting up your EHR inbox, be sure to organize it with folders and tags. Once the filtering system is in place, the system does the heavy lifting for you. It automatically files messages into their folders so you don’t have to do it manually — greatly reducing administrative burden.

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Implement a triage system for incoming messages

While conducting your daily maintenance, start by sorting messages into categories such as urgent, follow-up, informational, and junk. This will help you organize your EHR inbox and prioritize your workflow.

This is also a good time to delete any duplicate or irrelevant messages to further reduce clutter and make it easier to focus on important information.

Make time for daily maintenance 

Regular maintenance is key to effectively managing your EHR inbox.

Regular maintenance is key to effectively managing your EHR inbox, so be sure to set aside time each morning and afternoon to review and prioritize unread messages. This may also be a good time to archive old or irrelevant communications.

Schedule periodic cleanups 

Although you may allocate dedicated periods for daily inbox management, achieving a completely read inbox likely remains challenging. We recommend scheduling extended time intervals for comprehensive inbox maintenance on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to prevent backlog accumulation.

These maintenance sessions should include reviewing unread messages, addressing non-urgent ones, and resolving any pending items within your EHR inbox system.

Use templates where possible

Email message templates are an excellent time management tool and a helpful addition to any customer service toolbox. For non-emergent messages, where you may not have the time, information, or bandwidth to answer an inquiry, a template allows you to acknowledge the message and let the sender know you’re working on it and will get back to them. 

When using templates, remember that they should only be used for non-emergent situations and informational purposes. They serve as a strong tool for responding to:

  • Prescription refill requests
  • Change-of-appointment requests
  • Check-up reminders

However, they should never be used to deliver test results or any other sensitive information.

Sample template for non-emergent incoming messages

Hi [Person name], 

Thank you for contacting us!

We're working on your query and look forward to resolving it.  

You should hear from a member of our staff within the next 24–48 hours. If you wish to get in touch with us sooner, please contact us at [phone number]. 

Thank you for your time and cooperation. 

Regards, 

[Your name] 

[Designation]

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Delegate when possible

With your staff in the loop, you can delegate EHR inbox tasks and assign non-critical messages to other team members. For example, medical assistants could oversee requests for paperwork or information input, while nurses facilitate the triage of questions or complaints that patients send.

Taking it a step further, you might consider identifying an EHR specialist on your team. As the in-house expert, this person would ideally undergo extensive training on your system so that they can take the lead in EHR inbox functionality, management, and maintenance, delegate as needed, and have the necessary skills to troubleshoot any issues that arise. 

Switch to an appointment if needed

Consider having time during your workday dedicated to electronic messaging — but when you feel a patient’s requests would benefit from a synchronous conversation, establish a workflow where patients are seamlessly transitioned to either an in-person or virtual visit.

Tame your EHR inbox for peak performance

While the right EHR system can be infinitely helpful, it is only as good as its implementation, care, and maintenance. The EHR inbox, often a hub of critical information, demands particular attention. Left disorganized, it can compromise patient care, boost team stress, and undermine your practice’s efficiency.

The key to overcoming these challenges lies in implementing strategic management practices that include regular maintenance and thoughtful organization. By taming your EHR inbox, you not only streamline operations but also enhance patient care and team well-being. 

Here is a glimpse into Tebra's cloud-based, ONC-certified electronic health record (EHR) with integrated billing, telehealth, and eRx- and eLab-ordering workflows. Learn more here.

Want to save time and improve your workflow? Start with these expert resources:

Our experts continuously monitor the healthcare and medical billing space to keep our content accurate and up to date. We update articles whenever new information becomes available.
  • Current Version – Mar 30, 2025
    Written by: Jean Lee
    Changes: This article was updated to include the most relevant and up-to-date information available.
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Sharon Brandwein, Freelance healthcare writer

Sharon Brandwein, CSSC, is a certified sleep science coach and a freelance writer. She specializes in health, parenting, and all things sleep. In her work on independent healthcare practices, she focuses on helping providers with their messages and resources, which ultimately benefits patients. She believes that independent practices are likely to be more responsive to patients’ needs, ultimately boosting care. Her work has appeared on ABC News, USA Today, Parents, and Forbes.

Reviewed by

Dr. Stella Bard, MD

Dr. Stella Bard is an ABMS board-certified rheumatologist with more than 10 years of hands-on experience in managing complex rheumatologic concerns. She is currently a practicing physician in the states of New York and Texas.

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