Hospital leaders now look to technology to help them reduce administrative burden and physician burnout while at the same time improving both revenue integrity and patient care.
This is good news for physicians because real time AI technology can help them better capture the patient’s story up front, within the EHR workflow, helping them avoid retrospective queries and rework.
But this proactive CDI approach also benefits other hospital teams – from medical information officers to financial leaders.
This article explores the far reaching benefits of using AI to embed clinical intelligence into physician and CDI workflows—enhancing documentation integrity upfront, within the electronic health record (EHR), at the point of care. The benefits impact many hospital teams from medical information to quality, from technology officers to financial leaders. Check out this article that explores these far-reaching benefits.
Content Summary
Physicians
CDI and HIM teams
Chief medical information officer (CMIO)
VP, revenue cycle
Chief quality officer
Chief financial officer (CFO)
Chief information officer (CIO)
Though physicians and clinical documentation integrity (CDI) teams are both invested in a complete and accurate patient record, their workflows often don’t naturally merge. For physicians facing increasing administrative burden, documentation integrity may not be their first priority. CDI teams are being challenged to do more with less, and can’t afford to rely on time consuming, manual workflows to engage physicians anymore.
The cost of sticking with the status quo is more physician burnout, revenue cycle friction, reimbursement challenges and poorer quality metrics. A proactive approach leveraging technology can drive substantial improvement to revenue integrity, physician well-being and quality care.
- CDI teams consistently cite physician engagement as a top challenge.
- About half of physicians report not having enough time to complete clinical documentation.
- Expanded CDI scope increasingly includes quality and mortality reviews—but CDI staffing has not kept up.
Physicians
In-workflow nudges powered by advanced AI close care and documentation gaps, before the note is saved in the electronic health record (EHR). Proactive clinical insights delivered at the point of care minimize retrospective queries.
- Reduces need for physician rework
- Reduces administrative burden and burnout
- Creates time to care
Receiving more than the average number of systemgenerated in-basket messages was associated with 40% higher probability of burnout.
CDI and HIM teams
Visibility to physician nudge interaction closes loop between front-end and back-end workflows. AI-driven prioritization, evidence sheets and query workflow management reduces CDI administrative load.
- Reduces physician query response time
- Improves CDI efficiencies
- Improves documentation integrity and appropriate reimbursement
Physician engagement consistently ranks as the #1 concern for CDI departments.
Chief medical information officer (CMIO)
Physician-supportive natural language understanding (NLU) technology helps improve documentation while reducing administrative burden, letting physicians work at the top of their licenses. A more complete capture of patients’ conditions provides more accurate physician quality scores.
- Improves physician support and well-being
- Promotes true picture of physician quality
- Improves patient care
Burnout harms physicians’ well-being, with CMIOreported downstream consequences that include:
-
Productivity issues
-
Early retirements
-
Recruitment/retention problems
VP, revenue cycle
Advanced AI promotes fully specified documentation at the front end, driving faster, more appropriate reimbursement. Closed loop CDI improves operational efficiency across frontend and back-end workflows.
- Shortens the revenue cycle
- Improves completeness and specificity of the patient record
- Improves reimbursement
Health care leaders report that they’re aiming to solve revenue cycle management problems by proactively focusing on fixing and improving front-end processes rather than reactively dealing with problems on the back end.
Chief quality officer
Computer-assisted physician documentation (CAPD) relieves administrative burden and gives your physicians time to care. Proactive nudges using your clinical protocols help capture patients’ true clinical picture, including severity of illness (SOI) and risk of mortality (ROM). Standardized, automated nudge and query workflows promote compliance and reduce risk.
- Helps reduce physician burnout
- Improves compliant documentation
- Improves patient experience and quality patient care
Quality leaders report that they face the challenge of inspiring change among people who are increasingly burned out.
Chief financial officer (CFO)
Supporting physicians with AI and automation accomplishes twin goals: Reduced administrative burden with improved reimbursement. An accurate, complete and fully specified patient record helps reduce inappropriate denials.
- Reduces physician administrative burden
- Improves financial outcomes
Physician burnout costs the health care industry between $2.6 billion and $6.3 billion each year, from turnover, reduced productivity and other burnout related factors.
Chief information officer (CIO)
Automated clinical intelligence embedded in physicians’ existing EHR workflows makes the most of health care IT investment. Advanced AI, plus data from across the patient encounter provides nudges that are highly clinically relevant. Secure, cloud-based architecture reduces support burden.
- Enhances EHR and augments existing workflows
- Single mid-revenue platform from capture to code eases complexity, provides comprehensive solution
CIOs and other health system leaders report that revenue cycle management is the area that has the greatest need for innovation and disruption like AI.
