Ochsner Health Taps AI for Patient Messaging Pilot

Physicians will review every response before they're sent to patients to ensure the 'human touch.'

Ochsner Health this month is launching a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to send "simple messages" to patients through its MyOchsner app portal.

Under the program the AI drafts responses to routine patient queries, which will be reviewed and edited by physicians before they're forwarded to patients. The hope is that the AI will accelerate physician responses to patient queries while also reducing the time that physicians are spending each day in front of a screen responding to reams of email messages from patients, and allowing them more face time with patients.

The first phase of the pilot will include about 100 Ochsner clinicians across the sprawling health system's 46 hospitals and hundreds of care venues that will use Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service linked with Epic's electronic health record software, testing simple messages unrelated to diagnoses or clinical judgments.

"Ochsner has long been a leader in using digital tools to improve the patient experience," Ochsner CMIO Louis Jeansonne, MD says. "Now we are looking at how technology can simplify workflows for our clinical staff, which should significantly reduce the hours they are spending away from patients."

In a media release describing the pilot, Ochsner clinicians stressed that no AI generated responses would be sent to patients without being reviewed by their providers to ensure
a "human touch." The tech is incorporated into clinical workflows with HIPAA-compliant encryption for privacy.  

"The AI will generate a draft for the clinician to review and send. It's meant to help clinicians respond more quickly to patient messages, so patients can get answers to their questions sooner," Ochsner Chief Application Officer Amy Trainor says. "And it will reduce time our clinicians are spending on computers so that they can spend more time doing what they do best—direct patient care."

Once seen as a niche or novel component of care delivery, EHR messaging expanded rapidly during the coronavirus pandemic and it has grown to become a virtually ubiquitous tool for most providers. However, a growing number of physicians have complained that they're overwhelmed by email responses, often spending several hours each day to complete them.

A study in the Annals of Family Medicine found that primary care physicians were spending more than half of their workday, nearly 6 out of 12 hours, addressing EHR messages. More than four million medical advice requests were sent to physicians via the MyOchsner app in 2022.

Some health systems are confronting the growing use of electronic messaging by charging patients a small copay. Cleveland Clinic, for example, charges three billing rates for virtual queries based on the amount of time a physician needs to complete the task.

To facilitate the process, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in 2020 created three billing codes for e-visits.