Maximize workflow and financial recovery with AI support
Episode 2
Dr. Tony Oliva, DO, MMM, FACPE is the Chief Medical Officer of Nuance Healthcare. He shares how hospitals can maximize their human resources, workflow, and financial recovery with AI support.
Episode summary
Pain points in the healthcare system
Dr. Oliva highlights that it has always been a challenge in CDI to help physicians understand why documentation should matter to them. What he has seen help bridge this gap in understanding is emphasizing that a physician’s strong documentation directly impacts:
—Organization’s quality care scores and performance which reflects on their career
—Improves their organizations margins which can improve their compensation
The pandemic has also revealed some important areas for improvement in the documentation system.
5:08 “Hospitals invested a lot in making sure that they were capturing the documentation from the physician in a way that optimized their ability to code the record. And they put a lot of infrastructure to do that, most of it in the traditional way, using Clinical Documentation Specialists (CDS) in that world. All of a sudden we come up against COVID…there was a huge decrease in revenue at hospitals. So what we saw was that hospitals were beginning to transition some of that non direct care support away from those positions. So we saw CDS being put on the front lines or furloughed, which was sort of was fighting against themselves. Because you still need to make sure you’re documenting and capturing everything.”
Looking to the future
Dr. Oliva emphasizes that the future of documentation relies on hospitals supporting their CDS teams with resources and tools that allow them to maximize their skills and handle varying patient loads effectively.
Before Dragon and Natural Language Processing software, CDI teams often had to engage in a significant amount of follow up with physicians for clarification, diagnoses, treatment, and findings. Now, Computer Assisted Physician Documentation (CAPD) tools powered by AI can bring some of these clarifications and findings to the front end of the workflow and prompt physicians during encounters for more specifics.
This maximizes the CDI team’s time by allowing them to only put their focus where it is needed.
12:30 “Is there a way using artificial intelligence that we can start sifting through those hundred records and find those 30-40 that have higher likelihood of being an opportunity, so that they don’t have to spend the time on those 60-70% that they may not need to be looking at…so another way of using AI is to begin to prioritize workflow in some manner that helps them address the higher likelihood problems makes them more efficient. So that the time they have saved can be spent on more complex types of issues.”
Dr. Oliva emphasizes that by making these two opportunities for a streamlined workflow a priority, AI powered CAPD will help your CDI team stay resilient and prepare for the future.