Northwestern Medicine Integrates DAX Copilot with Epic, Seeking More Efficient Workflow
Northwestern Medicine announced last week that it has integrated Nuance’s Dragon Ambient eXperience Copilot into its Epic electronic health record and will roll out the ambient voice tool across the enterprise.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
DAX Copilot, deployed through Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, is designed to help clinicians at Northwestern Medicine document their patient conversations while reducing the burden of clinical documentation.
βWe are already seeing significant benefits from DAX Copilot. It is significantly enhancing our ability to provide exceptional patient care by reducing the administrative burden on our physicians,β said Doug King, Chief Information Officer of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, in a statement.
Once the implementation has taken longer, the aim is to achieve further improvements in clinical and operational efficiency and free up more time for patients.
Nuance reports that Northwestern Medicine physicians who use the tool in at least half of their care encounters are already seeing more than 11 more patients per month, compared to before DAX Copilot was implemented.
In terms of financial benefits, the companies say Copilot users at Northwestern are already experiencing higher levels of service coding, with more accurate clinical documentation and additional revenue from increased throughput and incremental services.
Meanwhile, doctors say they are happy to spend less time in the EHR. Among other things, it is reported that the number of files kept at home outside of work hours has decreased by 17%.
THE BIGGER TREND
Nuance points to research showing that more than half of physicians reported feelings of burnout in 2023. Another study, from the KLAS Arch Collaborative, shows that clinicians at academic medical centers such as Northwestern Medicine especially under stressgiven their more complex workflows and burdensome documentation requirements.
ON THE RECORD
βBy implementing DAX Copilot, our physicians can spend more quality time with our patients, focusing on their needs instead of paperwork and data entry,β said Dr. Gaurava Agarwal, Chief Wellness Executive at Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. βThis will improve the overall patient experience while increasing the well-being of our physicians, enabling them to provide more effective and satisfying care.β
Mike Miliard is Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare IT News
Email address: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS.