If I were in your situation, @friendofmayo, I would be inclined to call the office and ask if the doctor had received your message or not. Could be a clerical error, or someone on vacation, etc. but you should check to be sure.

Being your own advocate is important always!

I would like to hear from you again and know if you finally got your message through.

Teresa

Hi @friendofmayo
That is an abnormal amount of time to not have received a response. It is possible that your message didn't go through or that it got overlooked unintentionally.

I might suggest you:
a) resubmit your message on the patient portal
b) contact patient online services using this form https://onlineservices.mayoclinic.org/GW/help

You will need your Mayo Clinic patient number to complete the form.

Yes, thank you! I sent my message again and this time I received a very thoughtful reply from my doctor in two days. I would suggest that anyone trying to message their doctors via the patient portal might use the "non-urgent medical question" setting rather than "visit follow-up question". It was when I used the latter that I received no reply. The former has always worked for me, and I am very edified by the doctors who reply so graciously and quickly. Perhaps there is a "bug" in the online services...?

Hi, @friendofmayo,

Since you mentioned these experiences with portal messaging to your Mayo Clinic physician, I reached out to the Mayo Clinic patient online services team. This is what they said:

Your care team normally will respond to secure messages within 2 businesses days or sooner. From a technical point of view, the subject line doesn’t affect how or when the provider receives your message. When a patient sends a message, the message goes to what’s called an Inbasket. From there, the messages are sent to the appropriate person, who then reads and responds to the message. We’re glad you ultimately received a thoughtful reply from your doctor. If you do have other questions or concerns about Patient Online Services, please reach out to us by using the form located at https://onlineservices.mayoclinic.org/GW/help.