Northwestern Medicine announced last week that it has embedded Nuance’s Dragon Ambient eXperience Copilot into its Epic electronic health record and will implement the ambient voice tool enterprise-wide.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
DAX Copilot, delivered through Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, is designed to help Northwestern Medicine clinicians document their conversations with patients while reducing the burden of clinical documentation.
“We are already seeing the significant benefits of DAX Copilot as it greatly enhances our ability to deliver exceptional patient care by reducing the administrative burden on our physicians,” said Doug King, chief information officer at Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, in a statement.
After an extended period of the program, the goal is to achieve further improvements in clinical and operational efficiency and more time for patients.
Nuance reports that Northwestern Medicine physicians who use the tool for at least half of their care appointments are already seeing more than 11 additional patients per month compared to before implementing DAX Copilot.
In terms of financial benefits, Northwestern’s Copilot users are already enjoying better service coding, more accurate clinical documentation, and additional revenue from increased throughput and additional services, the company said.
Doctors, on the other hand, say they are happy to have to spend less time with the electronic patient file. For example, the amount of documentation at home outside of office hours has fallen by 17%.
THE BIGGER TREND
Nuance points to research showing that more than half of physicians reported feelings of burnout by 2023. Another study by the KLAS Arch Collaborative shows that clinicians at academic medical centers like Northwestern Medicine are particularly stressed due to their more complex workflows and burdensome documentation requirements.
ORIENTED DATA
“By implementing DAX Copilot, our physicians will be able to spend more time with our patients and focus on their needs rather than dealing with paperwork and data entry,” said Dr. Gaurava Agarwal, Chief Wellness Executive of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. “This will improve the overall patient experience while increasing the well-being of our physicians, allowing them to treat patients more effectively and with greater satisfaction.”
Mike Miliard is senior editor of Healthcare IT News
Email: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.
