Orchid, a behavioral health electronic health record vendor, has developed what it says is the first artificial intelligence-enabled scribe to aid overloaded mental health providers and help patients get care faster.

With help from its automated clinical note-taking, mental and behavioral health providers that have been testing it are saving hours of documentation time and can take on more patients – or get some time back to decompress and reduce their burnout, said Joseph Pomianowski, Orchid's founder and CEO.

WHY IT MATTERS

Most mental health clinicians – at least 70% of whom are in independent practice – need to set aside nearly a full day each week to work on administrative tasks. It limits their capacity to see patients, according to Wilmington, Delaware-based Orchid.

The company is announcing a HIPAA-compliant AI-powered clinical notes solution on Monday to address their burdens. Orchid AI integrates with its own EHR natively, and with any other EHR through 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, alongside comprehensive policies, incident response plans and regular employee training to protect patient information," Pomianowski told 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 leakage, training the AI "on a clinician-by-clinician basis."

Orchid AI also provides templates to clinicians for obtaining recording consent, or they can use their own and encourage them to delete encrypted session recordings after note-taking is completed.

Mental healthcare recordings are saved encrypted in transit and at rest in the Amazon Web Services cloud.

"They have complete control over the data in terms of deleting them, and we always encourage them to delete it sooner than later," said Pomianowski, an attorney and mathematician who previously worked with AI data-analytics firm Palantir Technologies. "We continuously conduct risk assessments and update our protocols to maintain the highest standards of privacy and data security."

Orchid launched in 2022 by Pomianowski – who said he was shocked during the pandemic to learn that many people couldn't access the vital mental healthcare resources they needed because "clinicians were themselves overwhelmed with administrative work."

Many independent clinicians spend up to 25% of their time on administrative work, and that insight led him to help clinicians reduce their documentation burdens and take on more patients.

"In session, clinicians need to balance the need for accurate note-taking with being fully present while speaking with patients," he said. 

Also, many insurance plans require providers to follow their documentation requirements to pay for services, and many providers opt out of taking insurance or multiple insurance plans – leading to more barriers to care.

Older behavioral health EHR technology is often incompatible with newer technologies like AI, but "the addition of our AI-powered clinical notes solution is a significant advancement and advantage for clinicians," Pomianowski said.

Clinicians can use the new AI scribe in Orchid's EHR, as a stand-alone tool or on top of any EHR through a Chrome extension by recording patient sessions with patient permission. If the patient declines to be recorded, then the AI scribe can be used by dictating notes and the AI will summarize their clinical notes for review.

With the clinician’s permission, Orchid’s AI can train itself on the clinician’s style and use past clinical notes to draft new ones for precise continuity of care, the company said. 

It can also summarize medical histories, suggest billing codes and diagnoses, and provide after-visit summaries to increase patient retention. For intake sessions, it can pull information from forms.

"Customers report that because Orchid AI can now draft clinical notes for them, it reduces clinical note writing from up to 20 minutes down 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 Orchid EHR user, in a statement from the company. "I now spend far less time on note-taking than before." 

THE LARGER TREND

Behavioral health providers have struggled with digital transformation. They were not initially included in EHR Incentive Programs, which were designed to drive EHR uptake via the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' meaningful use program.

There is also a shortage of mental health clinicians, one that was exacerbated by the pandemic. The wait for care in some areas can be months or even years long.

"Our goal is to eliminate barriers to obtaining mental healthcare," said Pomianowski.

AI-powered scribe tools have enabled more patients and less burnout for primary care practitioners and other providers zapping the hours spent after dinner and more on weekends to complete the charting that contributes to the epic level of burnout experienced in healthcare. 

"Providers no longer have hours of documentation homework," Dr. Kendell Cannon, chief medical officer at Herself Health, said last year after her primary care practice tested many AI scribes available to it and selected a tool that could live on top of its EHR as an extension.

In 2023, Whende Carroll, clinical informatics advisor at HIMSS, parent company of Healthcare IT News, said developers were increasingly turning to natural language processing to address top-of-mind provider documentation burdens.

Later that year, legislators proposed that federal agencies develop voluntary standards for mental health EHRs and promote their adoption and interoperability, although there have been no actions to date.

ON THE RECORD

"The whole idea is to help [mental health clinicians] reduce their admin work and administrative burden, so they can spend more time either with their patients or watching more Netflix to reduce their burnout," said Pomianowski about the new AI scribe.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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