< + > How to prepare for ACOs' mandatory shift to eCQM reporting

Carol Ann Hudson of health system and ACO Lifepoint Health offers some of her experiences as a woman executive in healthcare (and the space program) and dives deep into the new Electronic Clinical Quality Measures.

< + > Generative AI roundup: IBM, Wolters Kluwer and others offer new products and services

Also: Chilmark Research publishes a new ebook offering tips for responsible AI deployment.

< + > University Hospitals puts a bow on new Epic EHR rollout

Several years in the making, involving nearly 30,000 caregivers and more than 6,000 support personnel, the massive effort will help the health system streamline care through a unified patient record, says its CIO Robert Eardley.

< + > The New Pandemic: Burnout Threatens to Wipe Out a Generation of Providers

The following is a guest article by Amanda Ford, Executive Vice President of Operations at ScribeAmerica

For care teams across the nation, provider burnout isn’t a buzzword, it’s a reality. And while some by-products of the pandemic are expected to disappear with time, burnout seems to be staying. If anything, the issue is getting worse. Increased workloads, difficult-to-navigate EHRs, documentation processes, administrative tasks, and more challenging work-life balance. Doctors are stuck spending more time working, but less time with patients.

The issue plagues every specialty in every state. And as providers grapple with burnout, more professionals are stepping away from healthcare altogether. Almost 3% of the healthcare workforce is resigning each month, accounting for 1.7 million people who quit last year. More than a quarter of those resignations are credited to burnout, reported Forbes.

The reality is that there is no pre-COVID world to return to. The stress of the pandemic exposed foundational cracks in the healthcare system that demand attention. Care teams must adapt the way they work, the way they engage with patients, and the way they embrace technology, to adjust to the new normal.

The New Pandemic

Burnout is used as a catch-all to describe physical and emotional exhaustion that results in poor performance, lack of engagement, and depression. Providers have named a long list of contributing factors that cause burnout, including; poor work-life balance, EHR and administrative fatigue resulting in long hours, overwhelming workloads, and difficulties interfacing with patients, among other issues. The pandemic exacerbated all of these issues and its impact is still resonating throughout healthcare. According to the AMA, nearly 63% of physicians now report experiencing symptoms of burnout at least once a week.

One of the greatest burdens to providers is documentation. Electronic health records were introduced to make documentation easier and more accessible. According to Becker’s, doctors spend an average of 15.5 hours a week on paperwork and administrative tasks. Hours spent scheduling and recording visits are not a part of the traditional workflow, forcing providers to rush through notes or complete them hours after encounters. With organizations focused on getting as many patients as possible through the door, work-life balance suffers for providers catching up on their documentation backlog. A 2019 article published in the American Journal of Medicine estimates that 37% of the time primary care providers spend with patients is actually spent interacting with EHRs.

Too Many Clicks

Burnout associated with electronic health systems is called “click fatigue”, where simple processes have become over-complicated because of how many “clicks” they require. To overcome this burden, many teams add an additional care provider to the room to help with documentation. Unfortunately, this only shifts the burden to another care team member. When a PA, Nurse, or other advanced practice professional takes on the additional role of note-taking, their workload increases and they suffer the same frustrations. While not just anyone can take medical notes, sidelining professionals into administrative roles wastes resources and does not allow them to work at the top of their license.

Expand and Conquer

Medical Scribes, on the other hand, are explicitly trained to navigate EHRs, taking medically accurate notes with skill and precision. By including team members whose primary function is to manage documentation, every care team member is left to operate at the top of their license, spending the bulk of their time on what they’re most qualified to do. With shortages and stressors rampant in healthcare, medical scribes are no longer a nice-to-have but a need-to-have.

Adding members to the care team ultimately saves time and money. The addition of scribes has shown a decrease in provider burnout, an increase in provider productivity, and an increase in revenue, even accounting for the investment in additional workforce. Check out the numbers:

• 27% decrease in burnout when physicians were paired with a scribe
• 10.5% increase in work RVUs per hour with the addition of scribes
• 26% revenue increase when utilizing scribes over three months
• 52% decrease in physician documentation time when a visit was scribed

Well-trained medical scribes make all the difference in how a care team operates. Expanding a team to include scribes boosts both productivity and morale. By letting experts handle documentation, providers are free to get back to what they do best; providing exceptional patient care.

About Amanda Ford

Amanda works closely with hospital partners and staffing groups across the country to deliver customized healthcare solutions at the point of care. She has worked in the medical scribe industry since 2002, beginning her career as a scribe leader and implementer. Her work has helped shape today’s modern medical scribe industry.

< + > Briya Raises $11.5M Series A, Accelerates U.S. Rollout of Blockchain-Secured Data Exchange Platform to Enhance Collaboration Between Hospitals and Life Sciences

Briya Enables Hospitals to Increase Revenue While Research Organizations Capitalize on Most Comprehensive Anonymized Data to Develop and Implement Patient Treatments

Briya, an end-to-end healthcare data exchange platform, today announced the completion of an $11.5 million Series A round of financing, bringing the company’s total funding to $17 million. The round was led by Team8, includes existing investors Insight Partners and Amiti Ventures, and is joined by the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

The funding will support Briya’s mission to transform how data is exchanged between healthcare organizations and life sciences organizations, with particular emphasis on supporting the United States health ecosystem. The company’s scalable data exchange platform enables hospitals to capitalize on their patient data. It has been implemented in healthcare systems and academic institutions, primarily in Europe and Israel.

“By implementing Briya’s data platform, we can now quickly access relevant clinical and radiological data from various sources in mere seconds,” said Dr. Jawed Nawabi, a radiology specialist at the Institute of Neuroradiology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, a Newsweek Top 10 global hospital, and Digital Clinician Scientist Fellow at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH). “This has not only increased our efficiency in clinical research but also improved our collaboration within our international research network, thanks to a decentralized approach, enhanced data security, and increased transparency in data processing. It ultimately enhances interoperability and data quality.”

The Briya platform connects clinics and hospitals with academic and pharmaceutical research teams, addressing the primary challenges faced by organizations in the collection and exchange of healthcare data. The highly secured data exchange empowers hospitals to effectively utilize their health data and safely share it, in compliance with all regulatory guidelines. At the same time, it provides life sciences organizations seamless access to high-quality, de-identified real-world data to expedite development and time-to-market for new therapies.

“Briya has developed the only end-to-end solution currently on the market that streamlines the entire process of data sharing between healthcare organizations and life sciences organizations. It not only handles discovery, formatting, de-identification, and securing transfer of data but also solves operational hurdles such as contracting, payments, and approvals,” said Sarit Firon, Managing Partner of Team8, leading the group’s investment arm. “This unique end-to-end vision, coupled with its cutting-edge technology, makes us confident that Briya will significantly improve the healthcare industry’s ability to make positive use of clinical data.”

Briya’s scalable blockchain-powered system standardizes all forms of electronic health records, enabling streamlined access to and exchange of live, anonymized healthcare data for life sciences organizations. The technology facilitates optimal use of a range of AI and machine learning tools, real-world data, and health economics studies to optimize clinical trials, ensure regulatory compliance, and accelerate drug discovery.

The timing of the funding highlights the confidence stakeholders have in the value Briya brings to the market by enabling healthcare organizations, researchers, and pharmaceutical organizations to efficiently exchange real-world healthcare data.

“Despite the abundance of available healthcare data, the fragmented nature of the current system, combined with complex compliance issues and a lack of standardization, means healthcare organizations face significant challenges in sharing their data with pharmaceutical and research partners, impeding medical research and care,” said David Lazerson, Co-Founder and CEO at Briya. “Briya’s data exchange platform provides a scalable and secure model that allows hospitals to take full advantage of all that patient data has to offer, with minimal additional effort, to promote greater collaboration while generating lucrative revenue streams.”

“Privacy and speed are top priorities when it comes to digital health and Briya provides both the confidentiality and fast queries simultaneously. It is the most comprehensive decentralized data platform we have seen in recent years, helping us establish smart contracts to share data and reduce data storage costs,” said Janet Meiling Wang-Roveda, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona. “We expect to see Briya adopted as a scalable data exchange solution in institutes, hospitals, and organizations across the U.S. in the near future.”

Prof. Ronni Gamzu, CEO at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center said, “Briya has enabled us to concentrate on pioneering research and innovation while fostering strategic partnerships with academia and the industry – all vital elements for our continued relevance in the age of AI. It has become an integral part of the hospital’s legacy of excellence, as well as the broader Israeli innovation ecosystem.”

About Briya

Briya is a blockchain-secured data exchange platform that enables healthcare organizations to share anonymized patient data efficiently, securely, and compliantly, while generating new revenue streams. It facilitates the quick retrieval of accurate information by converting healthcare data into FHIR or OMOP standards and seamlessly de-identifying queried data. This access to high-quality real-world data promotes research collaboration and facilitates effective data analysis in life sciences and healthcare.
Briya was one of 10 startups selected for the 2022 Intel® Ignite accelerator program, among the 2022 intake for the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s Project Healthcare Showcase, and participated in UC Berkeley’s Health Engine accelerator.

For more information, visit briya.com.

Follow Briya on LinkedIn and X.

Originally announced September 19th, 2023

< + > OCHIN partners with rural hospitals on connected care

The company said four hospitals are live on a new, full-service OCHIN Epic system and that it is onboarding five more across six states.

< + > AI Will Help Bridge Gaps in Canadian Healthcare

The OntarioMD Digital Health Conference, a gathering of the digital health community in the province of Ontario in Canada, returned in-person for the first time since the pandemic. The conference was well attended and featured notable Canadian healthcare author + journalist Andre Picard as the opening keynote.

Canada Healthcare May See Significant Benefit from AI

In his opening speech, Picard focused on the role artificial intelligence (AI) may play in Canada’s healthcare system. He made a convincing argument that Canada may see significant benefit from AI given the country’s unique access challenges.

Picard, was particularly impressed with ambient clinical voice technology. He spoke at length about recent demonstrations of automated physician documentation based on “listening” to the doctor during a patient encounter.

“This technology is not science fiction, it’s here,” said Picard. “It has the potential to eliminate all the after-hours documentation that physicians are having to do today – especially physicians in primary care.”

Anything that can reduce the burden on Canadian physicians is needed, according to Picard. Partly to prevent more physicians from leaving their Canadian practices (either to the lucrative US market or losing them from healthcare entirely due to burnout) and to ensure more Canadians have access to a physician when needed.

Picard also pointed to AI as a potential solution to optimize the usage of Canadian healthcare resources. He could see a day when AI would be deployed broadly to triage patients and direct them to the most appropriate level of care thus reducing the burden on the country’s overcrowded ERs and hospitals.

Picard’s best quote: “I can’t wait for the downfall of the clipboard industry in healthcare.”

Study Coming on where AI can be Effectively Deployed in Healthcare

To help Ontario healthcare organizations make smart investments in AI, OntarioMD is working to secure funding and partners for an in-dept study of AI. This study will look for practical ways that AI can be deployed in various healthcare settings and may include pilot implementations that will put AI theory into action.

Robert Fox, Chief Executive Officer of OntarioMD, shared details of this study in an interview with Healthcare IT Today (interview coming!)

AI Prominently on Display at OntarioMD Conference

The exhibit hall at the OntarioMD Conference featured many interesting startups alongside digital health veterans. Most of the exhibitors were touting their use of AI technology.

• AI powered chatbots and patient automation was on display by Phelix
• Ambient voice for clinical documentation was being demonstrated by Tali.ai and Well Health (who OEMs Tali’s solution)*
• Automated patient communication based on AI interpreting doctor’s notes for follow-up was being shown by WaiveTheWait
• AI analysis for optimal billing was highlighted by DoctorCare

AI and Digital Health Alive and Well in Ontario

Overall, the 2023 OntarioMD Digital Health Conference (#OMDDHC23) conference did a good job at showcasing the innovative work being done in Ontario. Despite a tough economic environment and a slowdown in the adoption of new technologies by Ontario based healthcare organizations, companies and health teams are finding ways to push innovation forward.

Hopefully they can maintain this momentum into 2024.

*Disclosure: Colin Hung advises Tali.ai through ventureLAB, a non-profit Canadian innovation hub.