How Atmosphere Is Saving Clinicians from ‘the Perpetual Dread’ of Documentation Overload


Well being programs throughout the nation proceed to sing the praises of AI scribes — celebrating these instruments not just for their skill to provide clinicians hours again into their days, but in addition as a result of they permit sufferers to really feel extra seen and heard.

St. Luke’s Well being System is among the many many organizations nationwide which might be scaling their use of AI-powered documentation instruments. This month, the Idaho-based well being system — which includes eight hospitals and greater than 350 clinics — introduced that it has begun rolling out Atmosphere Healthcare’s AI platform throughout its whole enterprise following a profitable pilot.

Atmosphere’s AI platform helps clinicians design their agenda earlier than a affected person go to begins. As soon as the clinician is within the room with a affected person, Atmosphere listens to the dialog. The know-how then leverages all the affected person’s historic EHR information, in addition to the recording of the go to, to automate documentation for the affected person and clinician. This consists of scientific notes, after-visit summaries, referral letters, and CPT and ICD-10 coding options.

St. Luke’s selected Atmosphere as its AI-powered documentation companion due to the corporate’s “deep AI experience,” mentioned Reid Stephan, the well being system’s CIO.

“It was very clear they understood generative AI. That they had founders and staff that had deep connections and years of expertise with the know-how. In addition they had an awesome sensitivity to and understanding of healthcare — a deference to operations and clinicians, and that basically resonated with our medical doctors. And so they spent the time attending to know us,” Stephan acknowledged.

In his view, these qualities helped Atmosphere stand out from the various different distributors promoting AI scribes. A few of these firms embody Microsoft, Suki, Abridge and DeepScribe.

Atmosphere’s skill to seamlessly combine with Epic, in addition to the corporate’s willingness to work carefully with St. Luke’s clinicians to develop instruments tailor-made to varied specialties, have been additionally necessary elements, Stephan famous.

Starting in March of final 12 months, the companions started launching a pilot program throughout main care and 11 specialties: household medication, inner medication, cardiology, oncology, behavioral well being, neurology, neurosurgery, nephrology, pediatrics, pediatric nephrology and pediatric hematology.

“We had 35 physicians and [advanced practice professionals] within the preliminary pilot — and inside only a few weeks, we noticed fast indicators of success,” Stephan declared.

Throughout the pilot, clinicians’ documentation time dropped by a median of 39%, in response to St. Luke’s case research. The period of time saved per clinician assorted attributable to various factors — resembling specialty, schedule and dealing model — however many clinicians reported saving hours per day on account of adopting Atmosphere’s know-how, Stephan acknowledged. He mentioned he lately spoke to a clinician who mentioned Atmosphere’s device is saving her 20 hours per week on documenting duties.

One other St. Luke’s clinician — Dr. Devin Laky, a household medication doctor — famous that she not feels consumed by “the perpetual dread of maintaining with documentation” due to Atmosphere’s device.

“Now I’ve extra psychological readability and presence with others at work and residential. Being a brand-new mother simply again from maternity depart, I’ll say returning to work with ambient AI makes me really feel like I can obtain nice skilled and private life stability for the primary time mockingly. I’m fortunate that is the time for AI to reignite my spirit on this profession,” Dr. Laky mentioned in an announcement.

About 400 St. Luke’s clinicians are at present utilizing Atmosphere’s AI platform, and the well being system will proceed to scale the deployment till all clinicians have entry to the know-how, Stephan mentioned.

Photograph: Elena Lukyanova, Getty Photographs

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