Halifax Health Improves Physician and CDI Team Satisfaction, Productivity and Documentation Quality with Nuance’s AI-Powered Solutions

Innovative Technology Improves CDI Program Effectiveness While Engaging Physicians in Documentation That Better Reflects the Level of Care Provided to Patients

Nuance Communications, Inc. and Halifax Health announced that Nuance’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions have improved physician satisfaction and productivity, while advancing patient care. Halifax Health chose Nuance to augment its electronic health record (EHR) system with a suite of proven, AI-powered solutions to improve workflows for its physicians, CDI team and coders, while contributing to improved patient care, documentation quality, and the health network’s bottom line. Halifax Health was also ready to transition to a more clinically focused documentation improvement program to better engage physicians around quality initiatives, improve CDS team efficiency, and support its goal to achieve clinical documentation excellence.

With Nuance’s AI-powered solutions, physicians are adding greater specificity at the point of care, reducing the need for the CDI team to query physicians for these details. In fact, Halifax Health reported a 63 percent reduction in severity queries and the productivity afforded by prioritizing encounters has enabled the team to expand its case coverage by 20 percent.

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“We are committed to improving the satisfaction and productivity of our physicians and CDI team while continuously advancing patient care,” said Cathy Huss, HIM director, Halifax Health. “Since implementing Nuance’s suite of AI-powered solutions, we have experienced significant improvements in physician and CDI team productivity and satisfaction. Nuance CDE Triage’s prioritization and automation capabilities help our CDI team focus its efforts, using the added time to investigate additional opportunities to affect quality, while also expanding the ability to cover more cases.”

Nuance CDE Triage, a cloud-based solution for automated encounter prioritization, combines AI-powered capabilities and Nuance’s deep expertise in clinical documentation processes to prioritize cases that require the CDI team’s focused attention and documentation management. With CDE Triage, CDI leaders at Halifax Health can analyze performance and set standards for how their teams prioritize worklists, ensuring consistency and alignment with organizational goals. Better insight and workflows optimize quality and financial impact through better documentation.

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To support its physicians and advance the use of its EHR, Halifax Health implemented Dragon Medical One speech recognition. Dragon Medical One, a HITRUST CSF certified solution, is completely cloud-based and seamlessly integrated into existing workflows so users can enjoy consistent documentation experiences regardless of their location. Greater ease of installation and virtualization support, higher portability and access, greater accuracy, and built-in productivity tools all contribute to increases in EHR adoption.

Beyond the productivity improvements provided by Dragon Medical One, Halifax Health providers are further enhancing the quality of documentation with the support of Dragon Medical Advisor. AI-powered Dragon Medical Advisor analyzes patient notes as they’re created so physicians can immediately update their documentation at the point of care. As a result, Halifax physicians are adding greater specificity around patient diagnoses and more effectively capturing the patient story – the first time.

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“With the right solutions at the point of care, physicians are building better documentation up front,” says Dr. Ginny Kwong, vice president and chief medical information officer, Halifax Health. “The combination of people, processes and technology drives Halifax Health toward achieving our vision and mission.”

Michael Clark, general manager, provider solutions at Nuance Healthcare, stated, “Halifax Health has long viewed information technology innovations like speech recognition, documentation guidance and workflow prioritization to ensure optimal efficiency and productivity, as an essential part of improving patient care. The productivity benefits Halifax Health has experienced with our AI-powered solutions and clinical expertise help its physicians and CDI team save valuable time that they are now able to rededicate into patient care. This illustrates Halifax Health’s commitment to providing patients with the best care possible.”

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