By reducing clinicians’ documentation burden and cognitive load, Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) helps lower stress, fatigue, and burnout. In this blog, we look at how ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) can help healthcare organizations move the needle on every aspect of the Quintuple Aim—and we show the impact DAX is having on clinicians and patients at WellSpan Health.
A combination of staffing shortages and increased demand for services means many patients find it difficult to access care at the right time, and healthcare organizations are struggling to achieve the Quintuple Aim. It’s a challenge that pioneering healthcare organizations are solving with AI and, specifically, ambient clinical intelligence (ACI).
While increased demand can largely be attributed to an aging population and the ongoing impact of COVID-19, staffing shortages are often caused by clinician burnout. When clinicians are stressed and overworked, it has a direct impact on organizations’ ability to provide the best possible patient care. That’s why we at Nuance are so aligned with the Quintuple Aim and its focus on health equity, clinician wellbeing, and the pursuit of better health, improved outcomes, and lower costs.
The Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) improves clinician and patient experiences, reduces clinician burnout and cognitive load, and increases access to high-quality care for all patients. DAX is the latest stage in the evolution of our Dragon products, building on the trusted clinical speech recognition solutions that so many clinicians rely on in their workflows.
DAX is an ACI solution that automatically documents clinician-patient conversations. By automatically creating complete, accurate clinical notes, DAX frees clinicians to focus on their patients and dramatically reduces the documentation burden that negatively impacts healthcare.
Less stress and improved work-life balance
With DAX, clinicians no longer have the cognitive burden of remembering everything the patient says. Instead, they can fully engage in the conversation and focus on providing high-quality care.
And because DAX creates complete, accurate clinical notes for clinicians to review and sign, they don’t have to spend hours of their own time completing documentation. That gives clinicians a much better work-life balance, further reducing the stress and fatigue that are far too common in the profession today.
Better patient experiences
When clinicians use DAX, their stress and cognitive load is reduced. Patients feel the benefit too, because their clinicians tend to be more focused, personable, and engaged during the interaction, helping them feel valued and understood. Instead of looking at a computer screen and typing notes, clinicians can look patients in the eye and really listen to what they’re saying.
DAX helps improve clinical outcomes and increase care efficiency
The increased interaction makes it easier for clinicians to fully understand each patient’s care needs and build trusted relationships that can have a positive impact on clinical outcomes.
And because the relevant details are automatically captured, it’s much less likely that things will be missed, helping to improve patient safety and care outcomes. When clinicians are less stressed and fatigued, they can focus on providing high-quality care to more patients without burning out—helping organizations overcome the challenges of staff shortages and higher demand.
The increased clinician efficiency, higher patient throughput, and greater documentation accuracy that DAX enables can also help improve healthcare organizations’ financial outcomes.
Equitable access to high-quality care
DAX can also be a driving force in helping organizations make progress in the fifth area of the Quintuple Aim by enabling equitable access to quality care for diverse patient populations.
When physicians use DAX, they work more efficiently and reduce the amount of time they spend on documentation. That allows for shorter appointment times, enabling clinicians to see more patients and walk-ins if they choose, giving more people access to high-quality care when they need it. In fact, that’s exactly what WellSpan Health did.
WellSpan Health expands care access with DAX
WellSpan Health—a large integrated health system serving the communities of central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland—uses DAX to improve clinician and patient experiences and increase access to high-quality care.
To understand the impact of DAX, WellSpan and Nuance collaborated on a study to evaluate the outcomes it’s delivered so far.
- 85% of clinicians say they have a better work-life balance
- 64% say DAX reduces their cognitive load
- 59% say it reduces burnout and fatigue
- 88% of patients surveyed were extremely satisfied with their visit compared to previous appointments when their clinician wasn’t using DAX
- 94% of clinicians say DAX improves the quality of the patient-provider interaction
- Clinicians using DAX for more than 60% of their encounters saw an additional nine patients per month on average, without needing to extend clinic hours
Clinicians get back to focusing on patients
Healthcare organizations face many challenges to accomplish the Quintuple Aim, but DAX helps them address those challenges by reducing the time and effort clinicians must spend to create complete, accurate, high-quality clinical documentation.
Not to mention, clinicians who use DAX are happier—and able to deliver better care—because they have a better work-life balance, and they can fully engage with patients instead of documenting care during visits. They no longer feel stressed that they’ll miss something the patient said, or need to rush to get to their next patient. And they don’t dread the end of the clinic day knowing they have hours of documentation to complete before they can go home.
But perhaps most importantly, DAX helps clinicians reconnect with the reason they got into medicine in the first place—to make a difference in their patients’ lives.
“Nowadays, patients feel better connected with us because we’re talking to them personally,” says Dr. Mokarroma Sharmin, a Family Care Medicine Specialist at WellSpan Health. “We’re there for that moment, not juggling between the computer and what I’m hearing from a patient. So that was the main goal of being a physician, right? We want to be part of their life. And I think DAX has made it better.”
DAX really has taken our healthcare AI solutions to the next level. But what’s even more exciting is that, as a Microsoft company, we now have an opportunity to take advantage of the very latest advances in generative AI. So watch this space to discover how our next innovations will accelerate the transformation of healthcare and help organizations fully achieve the Quintuple Aim.
