Northwestern Medicine announced this past week that it has embedded Nuance's Dragon Ambient eXperience Copilot in its Epic electronic health record, and will implement the ambient voice tool enterprise-wide.

WHY IT MATTERS
DAX Copilot, deployed via Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, is designed to help Northwestern Medicine clinicians document their conversations with patients while reducing the burden of clinical documentation.

"We are already seeing the significant benefits of DAX Copilot as it is materially enhancing our ability to provide exceptional patient care by reducing the administrative burden on our physicians," said Doug King, chief information officer of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, in a statement.

Once the deployment has been in place a bit longer, the goal is to see other improvements in clinical and operational efficiency, and expanded time for patients.

Nuance reports that Northwestern Medicine docs who have been using the tool in at least half of their care encounters are already seeing more than 11 additional patients per month, compared to before DAX Copilot was implemented.

As for financial benefits, users of the copilot at Northwestern are already seeing higher level of service coding, with more accurate clinical documentation and additional revenue from increased throughput and incremental services, the companies say.

Physicians, meanwhile, say they're happy to be spending less time in the EHR – including a reported 17% decrease in after-hours charting at home.

THE LARGER 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 like Northwestern Medicine are particularly under stress, given their more complex workflows and burdensome documentation demands.

Northwestern is far from the only provider to avail itself of Nuance's ambient listening tools in its electronic health record. We've shown in recent months and hears how health systems such as Intermountain, Vanderbilt and Wellspan are using the tool.

In fact, as of January 2024, more than 150 hospitals and health systems are now using the DAX Copilot in their Epic workflows.

DAX, which was rolled out in beta in 2019 and made generally available the following year, is also embedded in other EHRs from Meditech and others.

ON THE RECORD
"Implementing DAX Copilot will allow our physicians to spend more quality time with our patients, focusing on their needs rather than on paperwork and data entry," said Dr. Gaurava Agarwal, chief wellness executive of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. "This will improve the overall patient experience while enhancing the wellbeing of our physicians, enabling them to deliver care more effectively and with greater satisfaction."

Mike Miliard is executive editor of Healthcare IT News
Email: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.