During a May 11 virtual roundtable sponsored by Nuance as part of Becker’s Hospital Review 11th Annual Meeting, Nuance CMO Anthony Oliva, DO, led a discussion about the benefits of adopting AI. Hospital leader participants included:
- Madhur Solanki, DO, chief medical information officer of Valley Health System in Winchester, Va.
- Kristi Richison, director of operations and strategy at Ardent Health Services in Nashville, Tenn.
- Adrienne Younger, assistant vice president of clinical documentation improvement at Ardent Health Systems
Four key takeaways were:
- Provider investments in technology are expected to grow. Dr. Oliva shared data from Gartner Research projecting providers’ IT spending over the next five years to grow 7.5 percent per year, with software spending increasing 14 percent annually. Most roundtable participants agreed with this projection and said they see AI as a strategic investment their organizations are becoming more interested in.
- Top budgetary priorities focus on clinical improvement and efficiency. Dr. Solanki’s organization’s top priority is to reduce its observed-to-expected mortality rate; others shared this priority. His health system’s second priority is to improve medical documentation.
Other leaders on the call said their organizations were focused on mobility platforms, generating labor cost savings with technology and bringing automation to the claims process.
- AI alone has no value; the value is in solving problems. CIOs said there is great interest in AI from health system leaders. “AI does grease the skids a little bit,” Dr. Solanki said. But he and others were emphatic that AI should always solve a problem.
Participants shared clinical, operational and financial problems they are using AI to solve. Clinically, AI is helping identify strokes, improve sepsis order sets and create predictive algorithms to minimize readmissions. Operationally, Ms. Younger explained that Ardent Health is limited in who can do clinical documentation improvement work. AI can help determine where to strategically place the individuals doing CDI.
AI provides greater ability to mine data, risk-stratify populations and target interventions to higher-risk patients, which can help advance value-based care. However, for AI to be accepted by physicians or care team members, it must provide value and fit in the workflow.
- AI can complement CDI teams. Nuance worked with top CDI-performing hospitals to see if AI could compliment CDI teams and fill holes in the documentation process. Nuance found that a significant number of documentations in need of clarification had slipped through the cracks and were only seen by the AI engine, not by human staff.
Nuance also found that of those clarifications delivered to physicians using AI, 60 percent were reviewed by the CDI team — but nothing new was found. This means the CDI team can send 60 percent fewer clarifications. Further, Dr. Oliva said, “Of the 32 facilities that went live with an AI for physician-delivered clarifications, they saw an almost a 50 percent improvement in their observed-to-expected mortality ratio, leading to a significant improvement in scoring.”
To learn more about the event, click here.
