The safety-net health system recently launched an ambient AI tool from Nabla that transcribes medical appointments and drafts clinical notes for the EHR. Denver Health has had nearly 600 users of the technology in the first two months.
The deployment took about two weeks. The health system offered training but most providers figured out how to use it after two or three tries.
“This product is remarkably intuitive,” Daniel Kortsch, MD, associate chief of AI and digital health at Denver Health, told Becker’s. “I have never had such a smooth rollout with technology as innovative and remarkable as this.”
While Denver Health considered about 10 ambient AI vendors, it went with Nabla in part because it was a more cost-effective option. Still, Dr. Kortsch noted: “From a budgetary and impact perspective, ambient AI is the largest project we have going on right now.”
During a two-month pilot, Denver Health providers experienced about a 40% decrease in manual typing. Dr. Kortsch has received spontaneous hugs from clinicians happy to have the AI; one even gave him a box of chocolates.
Patients have been pleased as well. Patient satisfaction scores have increased 15% for providers who started using Nabla.
Denver Health began rolling out the AI enterprisewide in December. Nearly 500 providers are actively using the tool, deploying it over 1,100 times a day. Another 105 residents and fellows have tried it out. Clinicians have employed it for 46,500 patient encounters.
About three-fourths of the users are adult primary care providers, but specialists have employed it as well, notably neurosurgeons.
“I have a really interesting drawing from a 7-year-old patient who shows a doctor’s visit, and the doctor is sitting there typing on the computer,” Dr. Kortsch said. “Instead of having a stethoscope out and listening to her heart or something like that, the doctor’s typing on the computer.”
That’s what Dr. Kortsch is trying to change with AI. With the ambient tool, clinicians say they’re making more eye contact with patients and getting back to the practice of medicine rather than taking notes on a computer.
The software is also helping with recruitment. “I was just talking to one of our new hires who specifically came to us because she was excited we had ambient AI,” Dr. Kortsch said.
Clinicians have to approve the AI-generated note. Denver Health’s Epic EHR has data analytics tools to measure the AI’s effects on efficiency and workflow. Nabla, unlike some of its competitors, doesn’t save the recordings.
Denver Health hopes to expand the technology to inpatient and emergency care in the coming year.
“These AI tools are innovating so quickly, so there’s an expectation that this isn’t a one-and-done rollout,” Dr. Kortsch said. “There’s an ongoing evaluation and deciding if the features being added to the AI model are valuable for us.”