St. Luke's Health System in Idaho has partnered with Ambience Healthcare on coding-aware ambient AI technology for pre-chart visit summaries.
Patient Recap gets data from the patient's chart and Epic's CareEverywhere, a platform that allows healthcare providers using Epic's EHR system to share patient data across healthcare organizations.
The structured and unstructured notes are processed, and the system analyzes 18 months of patient history. Each patient encounter is summarized by two to three essential bullet points.
The snapshot includes hospital discharges, ER visits and specialty consults. Each recap links directly to source notes, allowing physicians to drill down when needed.
This compares to an "electronic scavenger hunt," Ambience said, of clinicians searching through discharge summaries buried beneath specialist letters, medication changes in portal messages and various labs.
"The tool proves especially valuable for physicians who frequently move between rooms and need to quickly catch up on a year's worth of patient history while maintaining patient engagement," Ambience said.
WHY THIS MATTERS
A KLAS ROI study showed St. Luke's saved more than $13,000 per clinician annually through a partnership with Ambience Healthcare for enhanced HCC capture and improved E/M coding accuracy.
The automated AI pre-charting summaries are one feature of a platform being used at St. Luke's in all care settings including primary care, the ER and inpatient.
THE LARGER TREND
Ambulatory doctors spend about 16 minutes per patient encounter using the electronic health record, with roughly one-third of that time, or about five minutes per visit, dedicated just to chart review tasks.
ON THE RECORD
"Preparing to see patients is a high-effort activity," said Dr. Trevor Satterfield, associate chief medical information officer at St. Luke's Health System. "I was spending significant preparation time gathering relevant clinical information before a patient visit. As a clinician, being able to walk into every visit knowing the patient's background within seconds versus minutes is incredibly valuable."
Email the writer: SMorse@himss.org