Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health is bringing “joy” back to medicine by offering AI to its roughly 22,000 physicians and advanced practice providers.
The 69-hospital network recently became the largest health system ever to win the American Medical Association’s Joy in Medicine’s gold-level recognition in part, CEO Eugene Woods said, by “incorporating AI technologies that reduce administrative hassles.”
That includes being one of the world’s largest users of Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot for ambient clinical documentation. Advocate has extended the AI scribe to its network of providers, with thousands of them using the tool. The health system has also embraced Epic’s AI-powered chart summarization and discharge summaries.
“The tools do the computer work, the documentation work, for us, so our primary objective — as it should be — is looking our patients in the eye,” Suzanna Fox, MD, executive vice president and chief physician executive of Advocate Health, told Becker’s. “I should never have my back to the patient. I always want to look my patients in the eye to make sure they know they’re the most important thing I’m doing in the moment.”
The restored “joy,” she said, comes from “spending more time with our patients.”
The AI solutions are tied to burnout reduction, retention and the system’s Best Place to Care strategy, which prioritizes clinical experience as a foundational investment, Dr. Fox said. Physicians spending less time in the EHR can instead focus on leadership opportunities and their families at the end of the day. They can practice at the top of their licenses rather than worrying about filling out forms and other repetitive clerical work.
Anecdotally, physicians talk about staying in the profession longer or not moving to part-time roles, Dr. Fox said.
For AI scribes, adoption has been hard to measure because it differs by region — Advocate spans Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin — but the system has been working hard to offer it to all its providers, Dr. Fox said. Peer word of mouth and clear internal communications have been the most successful strategies. Some highly efficient clinicians opt not to use the tool, but most at least try it.
AI-generated chart summaries digest years of a patient’s history so the provider enters the visit more prepared, Dr. Fox said. Advocate has also piloted AI discharge summaries, with a launch across the system imminent — those save 12 minutes per summary, the equivalent of up to 30,000 hours a year.
Dr. Fox declined to disclose the dollar figure of Advocate’s AI investment but said the return comes from reduced burnout, enhanced clinician experience and improved retention (it costs about $1 million to replace a physician). The health system’s turnover rate is better than the national average.
Advocate next hopes to get a better handle on physicians’ bloated inboxes with the help of AI. Partial use cases include medication refill automation, appointment scheduling and patient self-service forms.
“We want to take the best care of our physicians and APPs so they can take the best care of our patients,” Dr. Fox said.
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