There is much variation across the country in terms of how far along health systems are in their AI deployment journey, with some hospitals still in cautious experimentation mode and others already scaling tools across multiple clinical and operational settings, noted Andy Crowder, chief digital officer at Advocate Health, in a recent interview.
Charlotte, North Carolina-based Advocate — which operates 69 hospitals across six states — is one of the health systems that has progressed into the scaling phase, Crowder said.
“We have over 15,000 users engaging with either an AI assistant, ambient listening or predictive analytics at scale today, and we’re the largest ambient listening deployment for Microsoft DAX,” he declared, referring to Microsoft’s popular ambient listening tool for clinical documentation.
Below are five benefits Advocate is experiencing as a result of being bullish on AI, according to Crowder.
Reduced clinician burnout
AI tools — including ambient listening models and tools that generate insights from EHR data — are lowering clinicians’ levels of cognitive burden and stress, Crowder pointed out.
By automating documentation and surfacing relevant patient information when and where it’s needed, these tools free up providers so they can focus on patient care instead of administrative tasks, he said.
“An average nurse, a med surg nurse, spends four and a half to five hours a day documenting what she does — not caring, just documenting what she does. What if we could get three and a half hours gone? Then, she’s only at one hour because [the AI tool] listened and did the documentation for her, and teed it up for her review,” Crowder explained.
This shift is already improving job satisfaction among Advocate clinicians, he stated. Using DAX means staff members get to spend less time doing administrative work and more time caring for patients, which is likely the part they enjoy most about their job. Ambient listening tools also help reduce the amount of time clinicians have to spend completing notes outside of work hours.
Better staff retention
With better job satisfaction comes better staff retention, Crowder noted.
In addition to DAX, he also highlighted Artisight‘s computer vision platform for virtual nursing as a tool that has reduced burnout and made staff members feel more supported. The platform uses smart sensors and machine learning systems that are spread throughout hospitals to unlock data that was previously inaccessible to clinicians. It also has algorithms that can do things like monitor for falls and pressure ulcers or detect when a patient goes to and from their room.
The turnover rate among nurses who use this platform has dropped from 13% to 3%, Crowder stated.
“Our belief is that the healthcare systems that find a way to pervasively implement AI at scale in their platform solutions will have happier employees and teammates. It will create a destination for people to want to come and be an employee,” he remarked.
Clinical improvements
Using Artisight’s platform to monitor for adverse events is leading to better patient outcomes, as nurses can intervene before the situation escalates, Crowder said.
This technology is also decreasing the number of unnecessary interventions for nurses, he added.
Take a nursing task like turning a patient over to prevent bed sores. Sometimes this occurs organically — a patient might turn over three times during their sleep, Crowder pointed out.
Artisight’s platform uses computer vision to detect movements like this and then documents it — which means that the nurse doesn’t have to wake up their patient or perform a task that’s already been fulfilled,
Enhancing the patient experience
Crowder recalled a 73 year-old patient he recently met at one of Advocate’s hospitals who was on day three of a hospital stay following a heart attack.
Thanks to the virtual nursing technology in the room, the patient’s daughter said that she felt comfortable leaving her father there to sleep alone instead of spending each night at the hospital, like she had done when he had hospital stints in the past.
Ambient listening tools are also improving the patient experience by improving patients’ trust in their providers, Crowder noted.
Patients often feel more satisfied with the level of care they receive when their providers are actively engaging in conversation with them rather than typing and looking at a screen, he said.
Cost savings
Crowder pointed out that there are several ways that Advocate’s AI tools are starting to generate cost savings — and he predicts these savings are poised to grow as time goes on.
For instance, fewer falls and pressure ulcers as a result of computer vision monitoring means shorter length of stay for patients — and therefore a quicker rate for turning over beds.
Additionally, reducing clinicians’ documentation burden means having to pay less overtime hours, Crowder said.
“When a provider is more efficient in the clinic and their cognitive burden is down, that provider is going to be more likely to take that new patient or fit another two into their schedule — they can do those types of things because they’re in a better place,” he added.
Photo: ipopba, Getty Images
