Alleviating documentation headaches would help physicians, but price also has to be right, says analyst.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare might be one of the most promising areas for investment and research.
Among those hopping on the AI train is EHR company Epic, which counts 190 million current patients in its system and plans to use AI to help improve physician documentation.
According to Koustav Chatterjee, a healthcare IT industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan, it's a smart move.
"Epic has catered to a relevant market pain point and rightly aims to help physicians repurpose time for better patient care," he says.
He notes that "many physicians are still opposed to the idea of having to pursue clinical documentation and practice medicine simultaneously" and points to the onerous number of clicks a single physician has to make within an EHR.
Twice this year, Epic has announced its intention to use AI to alleviate that pain.
In March, the company said it was partnering with Nuance Communications to provide computer-assisted physician documentation (CAPD) capabilities embedded within Epic. According to the company, Epic NoteReader CDI uses AI capabilities found in Nuance CAPD technology to automatically provide real-time CDI feedback to physicians at the point of care.
According to data from Nuance, using this technology results in:
- 36% improvement in capture of extreme severity of illness
- 24% improvement in capture of extreme risk of mortality
- $1,200 revenue improvement per clarified admission
And in June, Epic enlisted M*Modal's AI-powered tools for its NoteReader CDI module. The M*Modal CAPD technology applies machine learning and clinical reasoning across the entire patient record as the note is being created.
"AI plays an important role in both cases as it remains the backbone of Nuance's and M*Modal's Natural Language Processing/Understanding capabilities which allow physicians or CDI team members' to evaluate patient-specific clinical notes on real time and highlight personalized (severity and acuity risk-adjusted) clinical documentation requirements in accordance with payer and regulatory objectives," Chatterjee says.
Financial limitations
Such technology is not without its potential pitfalls, however, and many of them stem from financial challenges of "increasing enrollment in high-deductible health plans and poor collection from patients with copay or self-pay arrangements" as well as "flat operating margins and poor account receivable performance," Chatterjee says.
"Most providers are trying to rationalize health IT investments and favoring cost-effective alternatives that are mostly shared-service solutions delivered via different cloud-based operating models," Chatterjee says. "Epic, on the other hand, has historically operated within an on-premise IT ecosystem, which in many cases, required heavy long-term investments."
He also says that Epic has "to get it right" on pricing, too.
"Currently, Epic is offering the NoteReader CDI tool with built-in CAPD functions from Nuance and M*Modal," he says. "However, it is important to note that the price sensitivity for CDI is very high among providers today and it's one of the top reasons for product replacement."
Overall, Chatterjee says Epic is attempting "to transform itself from being legacy to next-generation health IT vendor."
Alexandra Wilson Pecci is an editor for HealthLeaders.
