Orchid, a provider of electronic health records for behavioral health, says it has developed the first AI-powered writer to support overwhelmed mental health providers and help patients get care faster.
Using the automated clinical notes, mental health and behavioral health providers who have tested the system are saving hours of documentation time and are able to treat more patients or get some time to relax and reduce burnout, said Joseph Pomianowski, Orchid’s founder and CEO.
WHY IT MATTERS
Most mental health clinicians—at least 70 percent of whom are self-employed—must take nearly an entire day off each week to handle administrative tasks. According to Orchid, of Wilmington, Delaware, this limits their ability to see patients.
The company is announcing a HIPAA-compliant, AI-powered clinical notes solution Monday to help address their burdens. Orchid AI integrates natively with its own EHR and with any other EHR via a Chrome extension, the company said.
“Orchid ensures HIPAA compliance by implementing robust security measures including encryption standards such as AES-256 – both in transit and at rest and strict access controls, in addition to comprehensive policies, incident response plans and regular employee training to protect patient data,” Pomianowski said. Healthcare IT News on Friday.
Orchid adheres to HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II standards, he said, but the company has also added safeguards to prevent data breaches, training the AI “per clinician.”
Orchid AI also provides clinicians with templates to gain permission to take notes, or they can use their own templates and encourage them to delete encrypted session recordings after they are done taking notes.
Mental health recordings are encrypted during transmission and stored in the Amazon Web Services cloud.
“They have full control over the data when it comes to deleting it, and we always encourage them to delete it as quickly as possible,” said Pomianowski, a lawyer and mathematician who previously worked with AI data analytics firm Palantir Technologies. “We are constantly conducting risk assessments and updating our protocols to maintain the highest standards of privacy and data security.”
Orchid was founded in 2022 by Pomianowski. He said he was shocked to learn during the pandemic that many people were unable to access the essential mental health care they needed because “clinicians themselves were overwhelmed with administrative work.”
Many independent clinicians spend up to 25% of their time on administrative work. That knowledge led him to help clinicians reduce their documentation burden and take on more patients.
“During the session, clinicians must strike a balance between taking accurate notes and being fully present during the conversation with patients,” he said.
In addition, many insurance plans require providers to meet documentation requirements in order to pay for services. In addition, many providers choose not to carry insurance or carry multiple insurance plans. This creates more barriers to care.
Older behavioral health record technologies are often not compatible with newer technologies like AI, but “the addition of our AI-based clinical notes solution is a significant advancement and benefit for clinicians,” Pomianowski said.
Clinicians can use the new AI Scribe within Orchid’s EHR, as a standalone tool, or on top of any EHR via a Chrome extension to record patient sessions with patient consent. If the patient declines to be recorded, the AI Scribe can be used to dictate notes and the AI will summarize their clinical notes for review.
With the clinician’s permission, Orchid’s AI can train itself in the clinician’s style and use old clinical notes to generate new notes, ensuring continuity of care more accurately, the company said.
It can also summarize medical histories, suggest billing codes and diagnoses, and provide post-visit summaries to increase patient retention. For intake sessions, it can pull information from forms.
“Customers report that Orchid AI can now create clinical notes for them, reducing the time it takes to write clinical notes from 20 minutes to a few seconds per session,” said Ada Peng, spatial data analyst at Orchid and the architect of Orchid AI.
“The addition of Orchid AI is fantastic,” added Dr. David Halpern, a board-certified psychiatrist practicing in Pennsylvania and an Orchid EHR user, in a statement from the company. “I now spend far less time taking notes than I used to.”
THE BIGGER TREND
Behavioral health providers have struggled with digital transformation. They were initially excluded from EHR Incentive Programs, which were designed to encourage EHR adoption through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Meaningful Use program.
There is also a shortage of mental health clinicians, a shortage that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, with wait times for care in some areas stretching for months or even years.
“Our goal is to remove the barriers to accessing mental health care,” Pomianowski said.
AI-powered writing tools are helping to get more patients up and running and reducing burnout among primary care providers and other healthcare providers. This frees up after-dinner hours and even more weekends to spend on the records that contribute to the massive burnout rates in healthcare.
“Healthcare providers no longer have to spend hours doing documentation homework,” Dr. Kendell Cannon, chief medical officer at Herself Health, said last year after her family practice tested many available AI writers and selected a tool that could be used as an extension of the EHR.
In 2023, Whende Carroll, clinical informatics consultant at HIMSS, the parent company of Healthcare IT Newssaid developers are increasingly using natural language processing to address the documentation burdens of major vendors.
Later that year, lawmakers proposed that federal agencies develop voluntary standards for mental health EHRs and promote their adoption and interoperability, although none have been actions so far.
ON THE RECORD
“The idea is to help (psychologists) reduce their administrative work and burdens so they can spend more time with their patients or watch more Netflix to reduce their burnout,” Pomianowski said of the new AI writer.
Andrea Fox is Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email address: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.