Atrium Health: AI Solution Improved Documentation Experience for Almost 85 Percent Of Physicians

New DAX Copilot gives back time to busy doctors; relieves administrative burden

Clinical leaders at Atrium Health have long embraced a concept they call “Best Place to Care.” As part of that initiative, Atrium Health surveys their providers to understand how to make the job more enjoyable and avoid burnout. One of the top concerns among providers is how much time they spend doing administrative tasks.

Atrium Health is the first health system in the nation to deploy an artificial intelligence tool designed to automate the creation of clinical documentation during patient visits. Nuance® Dragon® Ambient eXperience™ Copilot (DAX™ Copilot) helps free clinicians to focus on delivering high-quality personalized care, improving clinical efficiency, and reducing administrative workloads associated with burnout. Leaders from Atrium Health and Nuance discussed the solution at the 2023 HLTH Conference, in Las Vegas.

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Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Atrium Health has deployed DAX Copilot to its primary care physicians with plans for a broad roll-out across its footprint. The solution allows clinicians to create draft clinical summaries automatically and securely in seconds from in-person exams or via telehealth patient conversations for immediate review and finalizing in the Electronic Health Record (EHR). Atrium Health physicians are already reporting saving up to 40 minutes per day with this advanced documentation assistant.

Specifically, Atrium Health clinicians reported the following:

• 92% of clinicians say DAX is “easy to use”
• 85% of clinicians would be disappointed if they no longer had access to DAX Copilot
• 84% report an improved documentation experience
• 68% say it has improved their experience providing care

With roughly 11,000 doctors and 22,000 nurses providing care at 40 hospitals and hundreds of care locations across North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, Atrium Health is part of Advocate Health, the nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system. Atrium Health is renowned for its top-ranked pediatric, cancer and heart care, as well as organ transplants, burn treatments and specialized musculoskeletal programs. Atrium Health is also a leading-edge innovator in virtual care and mobile medicine.

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“In addition to providing high-quality patient experiences and elevating clinical efficiency, supporting clinician satisfaction and retention by enabling physicians and nurses to work at the top of their licensure is one of our top organizational priorities,” said Dr. Matt Anderson, senior vice president and medical director of virtual health for Advocate Health and Atrium Health’s senior medical director for primary care. “DAX Copilot is enabling a better clinician experience. Most of our surveyed users are reporting a positive impact on their day-to-day schedule, being able to increase the number of patients they are able to see and even spending more time with them. This type of scale and satisfaction is critical in the advancement of healthcare.”

DAX Copilot builds on existing Dragon ambient technology, which is currently deployed across hundreds of healthcare organizations and used by thousands of clinicians, resulting in a 70% reduction in feelings of burnout and fatigue, 50% less time spent on documentation, seven minutes saved per encounter, and five additional appointments added on average per clinic day, according to internal research. DAX Copilot provides an immediate and highly accessible entry point for healthcare organizations to adopt at scale a new generation of AI-powered clinical documentation applications, leveraging their existing investments in the trusted Nuance Dragon Medical platform which is used by more than 550,000 users worldwide and provides clinicians with the ability to use their voices to capture the patient story efficiently and securely, more naturally navigate key clinical systems, and easily access information to facilitate patient care. Clinicians using DAX Copilot in a private preview have reported that it has helped them achieve a better work-life balance, higher job satisfaction, more focused, personable, and conversational patient visits and reduced feelings of burnout and cognitive load.

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“Atrium Health is a national leader in providing high-quality, state-of-the-art healthcare services due, in part, to their commitment to technology investments that empower their clinicians,” said Diana Nole, executive vice president and general manager of healthcare at Nuance. “DAX Copilot is a major step forward in the practical use of AI to help clinicians provide personalized patient care by streamlining clinical workflows, expanding access to care and enhancing patient engagement. The combination of Nuance’s industry-leading AI solutions and services with Microsoft’s horizontal capabilities and industry-leading security and compliance enables health systems to implement sustainable strategies that improve clinician wellness, healthcare quality and costs.”

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