Ambulatory Orthopaedic Surgery Advanced Practice Providers in an Academic Medical Center Spend 5.9 Hours a Week on InBasket Management

Background: Electronic medical record (EMR) Inbasket management is a routine part of modern healthcare including direct access to providers from patients. We aimed to determine the quantity and time spent with direct Inbasket management tasks by subspecialty advanced practice providers (APPs) at an academic medical center. Methods: In a cohort review of four orthopedic surgery APPs at an academic medical center, each were asked document the time spent on the most common tasks encountered in our EMR system over a 6-week span in 2023 during the 5-day workweek. Providers would log the quantity of tasks and the time spent on each task in real time and would be averaged weekly. Minimum of three weeks of tasks were requested to be part of the investigation. Results: Four providers met inclusion criteria. Providers averaged 102.8 tasks per week. Messages sent to administrative assistant regarding patient care coordination accounted for the highest number of tasks per week (24.6). Patient advice requests (via InBasket) (24.3) and test results reviewed with patients on the phone (23.6) accounted for the second and third highest tasks performed. Reviewing test results accounted for the most amount of time spent at 83.6 minutes per week. “Other” tasks accounted for the second most at 79.7 minutes, and patient advice requests at 48.2 minutes at third. In total, providers spent an average of 356.8 minutes per week on tasks (5.9 hours). Conclusions: Advanced practice providers in a surgical subspecialty spend nearly 6-hours per week on administrative patient care tasks. This should be considered when evaluating a providers objective output as well as consideration of various employment positions. Clinical Relevance: There is no significant data in publication to reference the quantity of “non-RVU” generating tasks that various healthcare providers. This evaluation provides some level of reference for healthcare professionals including provider and administrator. Level of Evidence: IV.