Alpine Physician Partners adopts AI tool to enhance clinician efficiency

Alpine Physician Partners, an organisation operating primary care facilities across multiple states in the United States, has announced its intention to widely implement a state-of-the-art AI-based documentation and coding tool developed by Ambience Healthcare. This decision follows a successful pilot programme that demonstrated significant time savings for clinicians using the technology.

The tool, developed by Ambience Healthcare, is designed to tackle the imbalance in how clinicians allocate their time. Presently, it is estimated that only 27% of a healthcare provider’s time is dedicated to direct patient care, with the remaining 73% consumed by administrative duties, such as electronic health record (EHR) management and note-taking. Michael Ng, CEO of Ambience Healthcare, outlined that the company’s mission is to invert these figures, thereby allowing healthcare providers to devote more of their time to patient care rather than paperwork.

The integration capabilities of the tool are noteworthy, as it can be embedded within three popular EHR systems: Epic, Cerner, and Athenahealth. It streamlines various documentation processes by recording patient visits and using AI to generate clinical notes, after-visit summaries, referral letters, and coding suggestions. Clinicians can use either mobile devices or desktop computers to manage these tasks, aided by the tool’s ability to extract and utilise historical EHR context.

Dr. Chan Chuang, President of Alpine Physician Partners, noted that the implementation of Ambience’s technology began in December and is now used by 74 clinicians within the organisation. He praised the tool for producing high-quality notes that consistently reflect patient encounters, especially pertinent for primary care and geriatric visits. The AI tool also facilitates bidirectional interfacing with the EHR, ensuring seamless integration into Alpine’s existing documentation systems.

A standout feature of Ambience’s tool is its capacity to capture and output information in Spanish, a critical function for Alpine’s practices in Texas, where there is a significant Spanish-speaking population. This feature embodies part of the organisation’s commitment to culturally competent care.

Before deploying the AI-driven solution, Alpine’s clinicians spent an average of 4.7 hours daily on charting, often extending into after-work hours. However, since implementing Ambience’s tool, this figure has reduced substantially to approximately 1.2 hours per day, with the majority of this occurring during patient visits rather than afterward. This shift not only enhances workflow efficiency but also contributes to a better work-life balance for clinicians, who now have less after-hours work.

Dr. Chuang has highlighted the successful integration of Ambience’s tool as a potential benchmark for other healthcare providers considering similar technological adoptions. He advocates for comprehensive testing to identify solutions that can relieve the administrative burden on clinicians, thereby allowing them to focus more effectively on patient care.

Alpine Physician Partners’ adoption of Ambience Healthcare’s documentation tool marks a significant stride in the incorporation of AI technology in healthcare settings, promising to redefine the operational efficiencies for clinicians across the organisation’s various locations.

Source: Noah Wire Services