Email overload costs docs, hospitals too much

In a letter to JAMA Pediatrics, two physicians at the Penn State College of Medicine took a look at "endless daily emails" from their medical center, department and university. Ian Paul, M.D., wrote that he received more than 2,000 mass emails during the 2009-2010 academic year. Along with Benjamin Levi, M.D., Ph.D., the two doctors calculated how much it cost the medical center to have doctors read them--it added up to millions of dollars. "If 30 seconds were spent per email, the annual cost per physician to read these mass distribution emails was $1,641. If 90 seconds were spent per email, the cost was $4,923 per physician," they wrote. "With 629 employed physicians, the annual institutional cost was between more than $1million and more than $3 million fojavascript:void(0);r physicians to read mass distribution emails." Letter