Clinicians are constantly being asked to do more with less. The bottom line is that more time is spent on electronic health records (EHR) and less time in contact with patients and family members.One article An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that “there is a serious lack of consistency between the values ​​of nursing staff and the reconfigured healthcare system.” This dislocation has greatly contributed to the burnout of clinicians, which has reached record levels and the cost has soared.Guess so Doctor replacement In the United States, the annual reduction in clinical work time due to burnout amounts to US$4.6 billion, which is equivalent to US$7,600 per hired doctor.
The workflow around documentation is an important area of ​​contention.Recent studies have shown that a quarter of file Occurs during office free time, at the end of the working day, or after leaving the office. The other third is done during the patient’s visit. When clinicians focus on inputting data into computers, they don’t spend time talking face-to-face with patients. It is the contact between clinicians and patients that is the core reason why clinicians enter the medical field.
Our current position
Several interventions have been proposed Address burnoutMany of them focus on things like mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques. But research shows that these effects are not significant. They also did not touch the core of the problem—the increased time burden surrounding documentation and other administrative tasks.
More than half Clinician under investigation Said they were exhausted because of documents and other administrative tasks.
More forward-thinking organizations have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the documentation burden on clinicians. However, artificial intelligence—for now—has deficiencies, especially in the areas of primary care and emergency medicine, where the quality and level of detail of patient conversations and health information exchanges vary. Artificial intelligence does not yet have the ability to accurately replicate or provide the necessary contextual meaning or intent behind these conversations in more complex or multi-party clinical environments.
Better together
A more effective method is a hybrid solution, which still uses artificial intelligence but involves humans. The combination of artificial intelligence-driven automation tools and professionally trained virtual scribes becomes a dynamic duo that serves as an extension of the clinician’s nursing team. This is a more practical way to automate most of the content of medical records, while also supporting smarter customized content.
When artificial intelligence is used in conjunction with a virtual scribe, it can save clinicians nearly three hours of documentation and management tasks every day, while increasing productivity by up to 20%. According to a clinician’s survey, this combined solution can increase work and life satisfaction by 40%. One thing I hear over and over is that clinicians like to have more time for free and fluid conversations with patients. The result is to improve the operational efficiency of clinicians and practice levels, reduce the loss of doctors, and increase patient satisfaction. In many cases, clinicians are able to see more patients or receive more urgent referrals.
The benefits of using virtual scribes in conjunction with AI even go beyond document efficiency. Because artificial intelligence simplifies the entire documentation process, scribes can increase their influence by taking on additional tasks, such as drawing charts of backlogs and placing orders for things like tests, drugs, and laboratories. They can also help improve the efficiency of each patient visit by updating the doctor’s information before entering the examination room, allowing them to spend less time reviewing the patient’s medical history in the EHR so that they can immediately solve the problem at hand.
Better way
Every patient is different. Artificial intelligence and machine learning alone cannot capture and accurately record all the complex nuances that make up a patient’s health and unique situation. A hybrid solution involving humans is the best of both worlds and is the most effective way to capture clinical conversation today. The bottom line is a better patient experience and reduced clinician burnout.
