HCA Healthcare Launches AI-Enabled Ambient Documentation Partnership

HCA Healthcare and Augmedix have announced a partnership aimed at accelerating the development of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled ambient documentation solutions for acute care providers.

According to the press release, these products will use automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology and natural language processing (NLP) to convert clinician-patient conversations into medical notes, which care teams can then review and finalize before the notes are integrated into patient EHRs.

Documentation and other administrative burdens can contribute significantly to clinician burnout, leading healthcare organizations to prioritize EHR optimization and clinical documentation improvement, which have been shown to cut burnout, as part of their health IT strategy.

As part of its partnership with Augmedix, HCA Healthcare will pilot the company’s ASR- and NLP-based documentation solutions in the emergency departments (EDs) of two hospitals, with an expansion into the EDs of two additional hospitals planned.

Conversations around ambient clinical intelligence solutions in the EHR industry, like those in the pilot, suggest that these technologies could significantly streamline documentation and improve care delivery.

“We are excited to partner with Augmedix to develop ambient documentation in the acute care setting,” said Michael J. Schlosser, MD, senior vice president, HCA Healthcare’s department of Care Transformation and Innovation, in the press release. “This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way documentation occurs at the point of care, and this partnership and investment is part of our broader strategy to use technology to support our physicians and nurses and enhance patient care.”

The pilot is part of a larger strategy at HCA Healthcare that prioritizes working with clinicians to develop and deploy advanced technologies into patient care. During the pilot, the health system will gather clinician, nurse, and patient feedback on the project to help determine potential use cases for Augmedix’s offerings at other HCA Healthcare facilities.

“This Augmedix proof-of-concept is not a complete solution, which is by design,” Schlosser continued. “We are capturing direct feedback from and ongoing collaboration with physicians and nurses to mold and develop the solution to meet their needs.”

Under the partnership, HCA Healthcare will also make a financial investment in Augmedix, which will advance the company research and development efforts in fully automated ambient documentation products for the complex acute care setting.

AI solutions to mitigate clinician burnout, ease documentation burden, and help clinicians spend more time on patient care have gained traction across the healthcare industry in recent years.

Last year, Open Door Family Medical Center, a federally qualified health center (FQHC) in New York, successfully adopted an AI-based EHR documentation service to help alleviate clinician burnout after losing on-site scribing services during the COVID-19 pandemic.