Advocate Health Uses AI to Decrease Clinician Administrative Burdens

AI tools are helping Advocate Health physicians and advanced practice providers spend more time with their patients.

Advocate Health has embraced AI tools to enhance clinician experience.

AI tools have emerged as a winning strategy to reduce administrative burdens on physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs). The results include decreasing burnout among clinicians. For example, a recent study found that use of an AI scribe reduced the burnout rate for physicians and APPs in the ambulatory setting from 51.9% to 38.8%.

The senior leadership team at Advocate Health is committed to adopting AI tools that impact clinicians, according to Suzanna Fox, MD, executive vice president and chief physician executive at the health system.

"We are lucky as an organization to have an executive team that is supportive of getting us the latest and greatest AI tools so that physicians and APPs can spend more time with patients, which is the reason why clinicians went into medicine in the first place," Fox says.

Two AI tools have had a profound impact on Advocate Health clinicians, Fox explains.

"We have [Microsoft] Copilot, which is an ambient listening AI tool," Fox says. "This helps physicians and APPs to go into a room with a patient and record the encounter. It can weed out things that are not important, then create a note for the physician or APP."

"It allows physicians and APPs to make eye contact with their patients, and it makes the patient feel they are important because the clinicians are not staring at a computer screen during patient visits," Fox says. "This technology is constantly improving, so we are creating more accurate notes and helping clinicians code their patient visits."

The health system has also adopted Epic Insights, which is a chart summary tool.

"For physicians and APPs, they can get a full summary of a patient's history over a period of years," Fox says. "For example, clinicians can get information about laboratory results over several years prior to a patient's visit."

Advocate Health is also expecting to generate value with a discharge summary AI tool for physicians and APPs in the hospital setting.

"This tool, which is in the pilot phase, takes an entire patient hospitalization and summarizes information into a user-friendly document," Fox says. "We estimate this tool will save at least 12 minutes per patient discharge, which could save our hospital clinicians about 30,000 hours of work per year."

Suzanna Fox, MD, is executive vice president and chief physician executive at Advocate Health. Photo courtesy of Advocate Health.

AI Tools Having Positive Impact on Clinicians

AI tools are boosting joy in the practice of medicine for Advocate Health clinicians, according to Fox.

"As a physician myself, anything that increases our ability to get in front of our patients and helps us listen to our patients absolutely promotes joy in medicine for clinicians," Fox says. "The data we have collected on the impact of AI tools shows they are creating more time for physicians and APPs to spend with their patients. In addition, AI tools are creating more time for physicians and APPs to spend with their families."

Advocate Health data shows that clinicians' work outside of normal working hours has decreased year-over-year due to the use of AI tools.

The health system conducts an American Medical Association survey that looks at factors such as the time clinicians spend in the EMR and burnout.

"We have seen those data points improve over the past three years specifically due to the AI tools we are using," Fox says.

In addition to data, the positive impact of AI tools on Advocate Health clinicians is mounting anecdotally.

"We have received feedback from physicians and APPs saying they had planned to leave practice, but AI tools are making them willing to stay in practice for a few more years," Fox says. "AI tools are helping clinicians to practice medicine in a way that they had wanted to in the first place."

With these AI tools, clinicians feel they are valued by the organization, Fox explains.

"When physicians and APPs feel that they are valued by an organization, they not only want to come to work with us but also stay with us," Fox says. "The retention rate of our physicians and APPs is well above the national average."