Communication volume forecasting is the practice of estimating how many messages and calls your clinic will handle in a specific period. It covers phone calls, text messages, portal messages, emails, and sometimes internal handoffs that start from a patient request.
Why does this matter so much for access and throughput? Because communication volume is one of the main engines behind your front office workload. A study summarized by the American Medical Association found that while phone call volume has stabilized compared with the peak of the pandemic, patient portal messages have meaningfully increased and stayed high, which adds persistent work on top of existing channels. In parallel, the United States Surgeon General has called out administrative burden as a key driver of health worker burnout and has urged systems to reduce repetitive tasks that do not add value to care.
If you combine those two trends, more digital messages layered on top of steady call volume and rising administrative expectations, you get a simple reality. If you do not anticipate communication demand, your staff absorbs the shock directly. That affects:
Forecasting does not magically reduce demand, but it makes that demand visible. Once you can see it, you can staff for it, automate part of it, or redirect some of it to self service tools such as patient portal software.
At its core, communication volume forecasting is a structured way to answer two questions. What usually happens here? What is likely to change in the next few weeks?
You start with historical communication data. That includes:
If you already track front office metrics or operational KPIs for clinics, you are partway there. You then look for patterns. Most clinics see:
On top of those recurring patterns, you add what you know is coming. New providers, an expanded referral network, tighter prior authorization rules, or a push to increase use of patient reminder automation will all shape future communication volume.
Once you have both pieces, history and upcoming changes, you can build short term forecasts. These are usually one to three months out. They do not need to be perfect. They just need to be credible enough to guide staffing, automation, and service level expectations.
When all of your calls, texts, emails, and intake forms feed into a single view, for example through a unified inbox that also supports AI intake automation for outpatient facilities and specialty practices, it becomes much easier to see patterns by channel and location. Platforms that sit on top of your EHR and practice management systems can surface that data without the team exporting and stitching together reports every week.
If you want to put this into practice without turning it into a research project, you can follow a simple sequence. Each step can be handled by an operations leader with basic reports.
Several patterns tend to trip clinics up when they first try communication volume forecasting.
First, they treat all communication as one blended number. That hides important differences. Portal volume may be rising faster than calls. Automated reminders may cut some calls but trigger more portal replies. Separate your channels.
Second, they forget about upstream workflow decisions. If your team changes how it handles merge unmerge policy for patient identities or tightens subscriber dependent relationship codes validation, you may see more questions and clarifications from patients and payers. Communication volume does not live on its own. It reflects what is happening in eligibility, authorizations, and billing.
Third, they underestimate the impact of burnout. If you treat your forecast purely as a way to extract more work from the same headcount, staff will experience it as one more pressure point. The goal is to keep access and throughput high without quietly eroding people’s capacity to stay in the job.
Finally, they never connect forecasting to decision making. A forecast that lives in a slide deck but does not affect staffing, queue design, or automation priorities does not help the clinic.
What types of communication should we include in a forecast?
You should include patient facing phone calls, portal and secure messages, text messages, emails that arrive through published addresses, and any internal tickets that start from patient requests. The goal is to capture the full picture of patient initiated contact.
How is communication volume forecasting different from call volume forecasting?
Call volume forecasting looks only at telephone traffic. Communication volume forecasting includes all channels, which reflects reality in clinics where portal messages and texts now sit alongside a steady stream of calls.
Is this only worth doing for large clinics?
No. Smaller practices often feel the shocks more acutely because they have less staffing buffer. Even a very basic forecast can help a small team decide when to stagger lunches, when to add a part time shift, or when to push more activity into self service options.
How often should we update our forecasts?
Most clinics review forecasts monthly and do a slightly deeper refresh each quarter. You may want more frequent reviews during periods of rapid change, such as a major payer shift or a push to grow visit volume.
Do we need advanced analytics tools to get started?
You can begin with simple reports from your phone system, messaging tools, and EHR, plus a spreadsheet. Over time, it becomes more efficient to connect everything to a platform that functions as a unified inbox and AI intake automation layer for outpatient facilities and specialty practices and that integrates directly with your EHR and practice management systems. That combination lets you forecast and then act on the findings with measurable time savings for staff.
If you want to move this forward without waiting for a strategic planning retreat, you can do three things in the next seven days.
If you repeat that cycle, even a few times, communication volume forecasting shifts from a theoretical concept to a habit. It becomes part of how you protect access, maintain throughput, and give your staff a workload that is demanding but not impossible.
