Clinician Burnout
Physician burnout remains a significant challenge for health systems and patients alike with over 50% of clinicians reporting feelings of burnout, largely attributed to manual documentation and administrative burdens. These tasks detract from patient care, eroding job satisfaction and fueling burnout. While this concerning trend is poised to have long-lasting effects on the US healthcare industry as whole, continuous advancements in technology offer hope for alleviating burnout and creating a better healthcare system overall.
The Pervasive Impact of Clinician Burnout
The detrimental effects of physician burnout have been a longstanding issue that was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the return to “normal” for most people, clinicians continue to grapple with overwork and the prioritization of administrative tasks over patient care. One study found that one-third of U.S. physicians spend as much as two hours a day working in electronic health record (EHR) systems. From pre-visit reviews of patient records to information tracking during patient encounters and post-visit documentation, the process of proper recordkeeping can be time-consuming. This strain contributes to burnout, resulting in alarming rates of clinicians leaving the healthcare field and exacerbating staffing shortages in hospitals and health systems across the country.
One survey found that 40% of physicians expressed a moderate to high interest in leaving their current organization within two years. This concern leads to a circular problem: as burnout drives more clinicians to leave the field, those who stay are caught in a perpetuated cycle of burnout, stress, long hours, and further staff attrition. As clinicians are required to shoulder heavier workloads and more time has to be allocated to paperwork, less time is available to spend treating patients.
While the issues of burnout and staffing shortages harm the healthcare ecosystem as a whole, the ramifications also extend to patient care. Burnout and staffing shortages can cause negative interactions throughout a patient’s healthcare visit. Patients face increased wait times in emergency room settings or struggle to schedule a timely visit with their doctor. When they can see a clinician, the visit can feel impersonal, rushed, and not thorough. The professional consequences of physician burnout have been associated with increased medical errors, increased risk of malpractice, and reduced patient satisfaction. These consequences leave patients in a vulnerable position, as these issues can impact their quality of care and their overall health.
Ambient Medical Documentation: A Promising Solution
One promising solution to combat physician burnout is the implementation of ambient artificial intelligence (AI) medical documentation solutions. AI technologies use automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP) to instantly extract data from natural clinician-patient conversations and convert the data in real time to medical notes, which are transferred to the EHR. There are a variety of foundational language models (LLMs) from Google, Open AI, and others that medical documentation companies use, some of whom combine such LLMs with specially-tuned open source models, to perform much of the heavy lifting when it comes to generating a medical note. Some companies go a step further and cross-check the output from these models against comprehensive data sets to ensure they deliver high-quality notes to their customers.
Ambient AI medical documentation offers several benefits that can help alleviate burnout among healthcare providers. By reducing the time spent on documentation, clinicians can spend more time interacting with patients, which can lead to increased job satisfaction and reduced feelings of burnout. Additionally, ambient AI medical documentation can improve the accuracy and completeness of medical records, leading to better patient care and outcomes, as well as immediate and substantial ROI for health systems
Augmedix, a leader in ambient AI medical documentation and data solutions, harnesses the power of several foundational LLMs, in conjunction with other models, and filters the results through its proprietary data sets, leveraging experience from more than 10 million encounters it has documented since its inception 11 years ago. Through an intuitive and transparent user interface, Augmedix delivers accurate and comprehensive medical notes that its customers can trust and rely upon. The company recently shared that its fully automated ambient product, Augmedix Go, saves clinicians in ambulatory care settings up to one hour or more each clinic day. Additionally, 94% of clinicians surveyed reported that Augmedix Go helps them better focus on their patients. The pilot program upon which this survey is based also found that clinicians were fully trained and onboarded in just five to seven minutes, highlighting how easily these tools can be seamlessly integrated into a clinician’s workflow and begin relieving administrative burdens.
A Stronger Future
Time is an increasingly precious resource for clinicians. Ambient medical documentation presents a tangible solution to physician burnout by equipping clinicians with time-saving products that prioritize patient care and foster positive and more connected clinician-patient experiences. When the right solutions are implemented appropriately, AI has the power to positively shape the future of healthcare.
Manny Krakaris is the CEO of Augmedix, a leader in ambient AI medical documentation products and dat