Medical experts are always looking for new ways to use new technology to improve the patient experience, and nobody really knows how artificial intelligence will be adopted in the coming years. While AI will certainly have an influence on healthcare going forward, experts believe its use as a scribe may prove most beneficial to care providers.
According to a new study published by researchers at UW Health, AI scribes have the potential to bring value to both a clinician and health systems as a whole. But what exactly is a scribe, and how could AI scribes help change the healthcare landscape going forward? We answer those question in today’s blog.
AI Scribes
If you bring someone to your doctor’s office to take notes about your conversation with the doctor, you’ve brought a scribe along with you. If the doctor brings someone in to take notes about an examination and conversation with a patient, they are utilizing a scribe. A scribe is basically someone or something that creates a record of a conversation or appointment.
In a perfect world, every doctor would have a scribe by their side during patient consultations. This way, both patient and provider could focus on the examination and the conversation without feeling like they need to retain every bit of information that is being relayed. However, many healthcare facilities simply can’t afford to pay someone to act as a scribe for every medical interaction. And while recording devices can capture a conversation, transforming an audio recording into a written record is time consuming, and not where a medical office wants a doctor’s attention focused.
AI scribes may help solve that problem. An AI scribe is essentially an ambient listening tool that not only records an encounter between doctor and patient, but also produces clinical documentation for health records that can be used to craft care plans and provide information for billing claims. Instead of transcribing a conversation from memory or audio recording, a clinician now simply needs to review an AI generated record for accuracy, saving them an immense amount of time and allowing more patients to be seen.
The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine AI found AI scribes to be quite helpful. Researchers found that use of AI scribes could:
- Significantly reduce the rate of physician burnout.
- Significantly decrease interpersonal disengagement.
- Significantly reduce the time that clinicians spent working on clinical notes.
- Significantly improve billing coding.
“With ambient listening AI tools, they have removed much of the clerical burden, and physicians can turn their attention to patient care,” said Joel Gordon, MD, chief medical information officer at UW Health and a co-author of the study. “Another benefit of ambient listening AI tools is engagement with patients. Physicians can look their patients in the eye, which is very important. Taking care of patients when you are connected with them puts the human element into the process of healthcare delivery.”
Moreover, researchers found that clinicians who used an AI scribe spent about 20-30 minutes less per day generating clinical notes.
“We are seeing clinicians going home earlier and having a better work-life balance,” Gordon said. “Providers are using this time to address patient questions and needs in inbaskets and reviewing the chart more thoroughly. So, physicians are using the time they are gaining from AI scribes to be better doctors.”
Gordon also explained why billing codes improved with the help of an AI scribe.
“One reason is that the ambient listening AI tool is omnipresent,” Gordon said. “It helps clinicians avoid forgetting about elements of care they give to their patients. The ambient listening AI tool is recording everything during a patient encounter, so it can generate better documentation and better record-keeping for the care we are providing.”
Gordon went on to acknowledge that one of the most expensive things to do for a healthcare facility is to replace a clinician, so AI’s ability to reduce physician burnout could have an even bigger financial impact than expected if it helps to keep doctors happier and less overburdened.
This is a very interesting study, and we hope that AI can be just as useful when incorporated into other aspects of the healthcare experience. As always, if you need help with a foot or ankle issue, connect with Dr. Silverman and his team. Learn more about contacting his office here.