AI-drafted patient portal messages increase physician editing time

Researchers from Dartmouth found that AI-generated drafts for patient portal messages actually require more physician time to edit than writing responses manually. This study analyzed 146,000 messages between 10,105 patients and their primary care physicians. The AI often produced drafts with inaccuracies or needed significant modifications, which means doctors spend more time refining these drafts instead of crafting replies from scratch. This insight highlights a potential pitfall in integrating AI into healthcare communications, underscoring the need for more refined AI tools to enhance efficiency rather than hinder it.