Technologies for Reducing Chart Review Burden
One technological innovation stands out as a promising solution to burdensome chart review: artificial intelligence. Preliminary research indicates that AI can have a dramatic impact on reducing the time that family physicians typically spend combing through patient charts — and help clinicians better prepare for patient visits.
AI assistants use artificial intelligence to greatly reduce burden. The AI performs tasks that would otherwise require substantial time and effort from clinicians. Clinicians using AI assistants are able to better care for their patients.
Among the specific burdens AI assistants have already been shown to reduce are reviewing disparate records and summarizing the patient’s history and care to support ahead of or during a visit. The AI assistant is able to review the entire chart and accessible records — including labs, diagnostics, referrals, consult notes, discharge summaries, and scanned documents — and provide the clinician with a problem-oriented chart summary identifying missing diagnoses and gaps in care, including the appropriate billing and risk adjustment codes. It does this in a matter of seconds.
Pros:
- Saves time for physicians in prepping for visits
- Reduces need to navigate the EHR for the right data
- Supports accurate and complete coding
Cons:
- Requires integration with the EHR
- Incurs additional subscription cost
AAFP Innovation Lab Partner: Navina
Navina is a leading innovator of AI-driven clinical review. The company partnered with family medicine and primary care practices to develop AI- assistant functionality to support clinical review, chart review, and visit preparation and is already successfully deploying its solution to practices. It’s a highly adoptable solution, requiring no new hardware — only software.
Artificial intelligence refers to computer systems able to perform tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence to complete — for example, interpreting and generating text and language and making decisions. AI has the potential to greatly benefit physicians and the medical industry as a whole. By analyzing vast amounts of patient data, AI algorithms can help doctors make more informed diagnoses and treatment decisions. AI-powered tools can also assist with administrative tasks, freeing up physicians' time to focus on more critical aspects of patient care.
Modern AI assistants use proprietary models built on the language primary care physicians actually use. They match data from a vast amount of information — consults, hospital notes, lab results, medications, claims, and so on — with the appropriate terminology. This information is then classified and interpreted to produce contextual, predictive insights that can be easily explained and linked back to source.
In AAFP Innovation Lab testing in practices using EHRs with application programming interfaces allowing for interoperability, the AI assistant demonstrated three major impacts on physician clinical review. It: it saved time, provided thorough clinical review, and supported improved value-based care.
Among the positive impacts: Physicians felt more prepared for their patient visits, having savedvaluable preparation time while knowing that a thorough review of all available records had been conducted and summarized, reported having better information at the point of care, and said their personal satisfaction had been improved.
Family physicians use many different EHRs, creating a potential barrier for integration and slowing the implementation of third-party innovations. The AAFP advocates for standards that allow robust data exchange with EHR, clearing the way for innovations with the potential to optimize the family medicine experience.
Results
The dramatic improvements that family physicians reported when using AI assistants suggest that such a tool could become essential to chart review.
Below are quantitative results from a 30-day trial for 10 clinicians before and after adopting Navina's AI assistant technology solution. The results present anecdotal evidence of these clinicians' experiences based on their reported levels of practice satisfaction, burden, and burnout. A larger-scale Phase 2 Innovation Lab, with more than 100 family physicians, is the next step toward validating that this category of innovation is essential for family medicine.
Decreased burnout
Which of the items below describes you best?
- I enjoy my work. I have no symptoms of burnout.
- I am under stress, but I don’t feel burned out.
- I am definitely burning out.
- I think about work frustrations a lot. It won’t go away.
- I feel completely burned out. I may need to seek help.
Significant time savings
How much time does it take for you to adequately prepare for a complex patient?
Clinicians reported an average of 14.1 minutes before and 5.5 minutes after the use of the AI assistant. This was a 61% decrease in the amount of time physicians spent preparing for a visit.
Being fully prepared
What percentage of visits do you feel fully prepared?
Clinicians reported they were fully prepared for 54% of their visits before and for 81% after with the use of an AI assistant; a 27% increase.
Identifying gaps in care
What percentage of visits do you identify and act on gaps in care and care opportunities?
Clinicians reported they identified gaps in care in 72% of their visits before, which increased to 93% after the use of an AI assistant.
