Automation Gives Back Time to Care Providers — Lifepoint Health CDAO

(US & Canada) Chris Hutchins, SVP, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Lifepoint Health, speaks with Lydonia CISO Todd Foley, in a video interview about the impact of leveraging advanced technologies in patient care.

Lifepoint Health is a leading healthcare provider that serves patients, clinicians, communities, and partner organizations across the healthcare continuum.

At the outset, Hutchins states that he chose to be in healthcare because it is his passion to find ways to support individuals who are face-to-face in delivering patient care. Next, he sheds light on the impact of advanced technologies on patient care.

Referring to the advent of electronic health records (EHR), Hutchins says that the goal has been to streamline processes and improve care, which has also led to some unintended consequences.

Elaborating, he says that earlier physicians could dictate their notes between patient visits, and transcriptionists would then convert these notes into reports for paper-based electronic health records. However, the large-scale elimination of dictaphones placed greater pressure on physicians to document things.

Now, Hutchins believes that it is critical to step back, re-evaluate, and find ways to simplify this aspect of a physician’s work by automating transcription aspects. To address this, he mentions collaborating with partners to test AI-powered ambient listening technology.

This is a promising step to reduce administrative burden, says Hutchins, as physicians can have meaningful face-to-face interactions while the system transcribes conversations, allowing reviewing at their convenience.

Further, he discusses how autonomous coding can be effective as well. Hutchins adds that leveraging advanced technological tools reduces the cycle time of getting the information out, enabling efficient billing and processing.

More importantly, it saves time for those delivering care. He mentions how organizations are exploring the use of GPT capabilities in the pre-visit phase. For instance, to review patients’ most recent test results or the last time they had an eye checkup. The tools can streamline tasks that earlier required sifting through volumes of data in documentation.

Adding on, Hutchins states that even with EHRs, clinicians often need to manually review visit histories, which can be time-consuming. While some EHR systems offer helpful reports and tools, the process still adds extra work. By reducing the time through new approaches, physicians can focus on what they are really trained for, he says.

Through the implementation of advanced technologies to analyze data, back-office operations have seen the quickest transformations, says Hutchins. The goal is to streamline processes while accessing essential information in the shortest possible time.

For example, there are tons of regulatory requirements for quality reporting involving metrics often based on numerators and denominators, defined by a specific set of terminology.

Thus, a highly effective application of advanced technology has been to analyze both discrete and unstructured notes, says Hutchins. It removes subjectivity from the equation.

For instance, if a coder is familiar with one physician’s style of dictation and documentation, the reports would be accurate. However, it may differ in the case of a different, unfamiliar physician, as the coder would need time to adjust. Also, the scope of human error persists, and coding errors can lead to reimbursement issues and audit risks.

This technology mitigates those risks by ensuring greater accuracy and consistency. It brings in two benefits — building trust and enabling clinicians to validate whether they did something or not.

Furthermore, AI capabilities also help in the early detection of certain diseases, and the organization has been working on those. It has been a critical thing to do with technology, specifically for the rural areas of the country.

Hutchins believes that it is paramount to try and figure out how to leverage that technology because there are no specialists who can predict a problem that is arising. Detecting diseases earlier would prevent their progress, thereby narrowing the need to travel long distances to get admitted.

Staying true to the mission of making communities healthier, Hutchins states that the organization focuses mainly on rural communities. As the resources there are scarce compared to the metropolitan areas, it is fundamental to figure out what can be done to make an impact there.

Concluding, Hutchins appreciates Lifepoint Health for doing everything in its capacity to bring innovative developments to rural areas. In the end, everything boils down to experience, and the organization is driven to make it as frictionless as possible.

CDO Magazine appreciates Chris Hutchins for sharing his insights with our global community.