Robert Gamble (@Rfgamble)

Want A Doc To Respond To Your Portal Message? These Tips Will Improve Your Odds, Study Says By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, Senior Medical Editor, B. Pharm. Last updated on Aug 25, 2026. TUESDAY, Aug. 25, 2026 — Hoping for a quick response from your doctor to a message sent through your patient portal? Then keep it cordial and positive, a new study suggests. Doctors were more likely to respond to messages that addressed them by name and had a positive tone, researchers reported Aug. 24 in JAMA Network Open. “One of the most important writing-style features was the message’s salutation,” lead researcher Mitchell Tang said in a news release. He is an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “Simply beginning a message with ‘Dear Dr. Tang’ seemed to make it much more likely that Dr. Tang would end up responding,” he said. Portal messages have become a routine way for patients to communicate with their health care team. However, many of these messages receive a response from a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant rather than from the doc, researchers said. “Unbeknownst to many patients, these messages do not usually go directly to their doctor’s inbox,” Tang said. Instead, messages go through a “triage” process in which other care team members review them first, determine their urgency and complexity, and decide whether to send them on to the patient’s doctor for response, researchers said. “In many message triage systems, nurses and medical assistants must quickly assess messages and make judgments about their urgency, complexity and need for escalation,” Tang said. “Given those constraints, writing style may understandably influence how messages are perceived and prioritized." For the study, researchers analyzed more than 3.6 million patient portal messages from more than 511,000 patients, examining them for features like length, formality, sentiment and greeting style. Results showed that certain specific factors made it more likely a doctor would personally respond, including: A greeting that included either their last name or both their first and last name A positive sentiment, as opposed to a neutral or negative tone A more lengthy message, with those of 100 words or more receiving greater attention On the other hand, some differences in writing style had surprisingly little impact on whether a doctor responded. For example, the number of exclamation marks or question marks in the message didn’t seem to deter doctors, the study found. Doctors also were just as likely to respond to messages that didn’t say “please” or “thanks” as to those that were more polite. .. https://www.drugs.com/news/want-doc-respond-your-portal-message-these-tips-improve-your-odds-study-says-131098.html?utm_source=ddc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily+Mednews+++August+26++2026&utm_content=Want+A+Doc+To+Respond+To+Your+Portal+Message++These+Tips+Will+Improve+Your+Odds++Study+Says&hash2=67c18834e7adf7d56a107d539fe7968f