Cleveland Clinic 研究显示，环境式记录员提高了临床医生留任率
Ambient Scribes Improve Clinician Retention, Cleveland Clinic Research Shows
AI 工具并非免费，而证明其物有所值一直是医疗服务提供者在考虑是否将其在整个组织内扩大应用时遇到的难点。
Cleveland Clinic 正在逐步证明这笔账是划算的。该医疗系统仅用四个月就让 4,000 多名门诊临床医生接入了 Ambience Healthcare 的环境式记录平台——根据本月发表在 npj Health Systems 上的一篇论文，这已被证明是物有所值的。
研究发现，Cleveland Clinic 使用 AI 记录员的临床医生中，有 60% 同意该工具提高了他们继续从事临床工作的可能性。这是一个关键数据点，也是医院在部署临床 AI 时需要重点关注的重要指标，因为在持续的人力危机背景下，医院每年要在招聘和留任工作上花费数百万美元。
由赞助文章医疗支付行业面临认知挑战医疗支付已不再只是交易，而是关乎控制收入周期。而且，这种控制越来越不在 ISO 手中。
作者：Lisa Brooks，医疗合作副总裁
该论文还报告称，在 Cleveland Clinic 推出该工具一年后，已成为常规用户的临床医生满意度达到 97%，按就诊计算的使用率达到 70%。
这与过去的大型技术项目形成鲜明对比。Cleveland Clinic 副首席医疗信息官 Eric Boose 指出，许多医生仍对 EHR 时代初期留有不愉快的记忆，当时人们普遍认为这项新技术带来的麻烦多于帮助，而且令人难以应付。
Boose 指出，Ambience 的推出之所以不同，原因之一在于该医疗系统将其定位为一份礼物，而不是一项强制要求。临床医生无需为了获得该工具而接诊更多患者或承担额外工作——如果他们想尝试，该工具就只是供他们使用。
Boose 表示，让临床医生快速上手与获得他们的认同同样重要。Cleveland Clinic 每天提供三次实时虚拟培训课程，以便临床医生可以在日程允许时完成入门培训。他们还增加了按需培训选项，供外科医生等无法参加实时课程的人员使用。
由赞助文章弥合职场心理健康领域的质量与可负担性差距在一次采访中，Kyan Health 联合创始人兼首席商务官 Konstantin Struck 讨论了 Kyan 如何让中型市场和企业雇主以可负担的价格获得高端员工心理医疗服务。
作者：Stephanie Baum
Boose 表示，医生在一两名患者身上尝试该工具后，大多数人很快就被说服了。
“每个人对在患者照护领域使用新工具都会有一些合理的怀疑，他们本来就应该如此，”他说。“但一旦他们使用过，我想我们所有人都多少感到震惊——就像，哇，这真的能提供很大帮助，还能为我们节省大量时间。”Boose 指出，这种早期的亲身体验始终会比任何自上而下的信息传达更有效。
量化这项技术的投资回报则需要更多工作。
其中一部分比较直接。Ambience 的平台还会生成编码和计费建议，这有助于确保临床医生能够因其提供的全部医疗服务获得报酬——Boose 表示，这项功能帮助抵消了采用该工具的成本。
但 ROI 的其余部分则更加无形，也更难换算成具体金额。Cleveland Clinic 直接调查临床医生，以追踪职业倦怠等指标，以及该工具在其计划工作时间之外为他们节省了多少时间。
据 Boose 介绍，几名临床医生告诉该医疗系统，他们计划继续全职工作，或因该工具而推迟退休。对他而言，这一留任信号具有切实的财务价值，因为如果没有这一点，该医疗系统将不得不招聘和培训替代人员。
Boose 补充说，这种对环境式 AI 的反应已经远远超出了 Cleveland Clinic。随着 AI 记录员得到更广泛的采用，他表示，它们很可能会从一种差异化优势变成医生期望雇主提供的东西。
图片：MoMo Productions，Getty Images
AI tools aren’t free, and
proving they’re worth the cost has been a sticking point for healthcare providers weighing whether to scale them across their organizations.
Cleveland Clinic
is on its way to proving that math out. The health system onboarded more than 4,000 ambulatory care clinicians onto Ambience Healthcare ’s ambient scribing platform in just four months — which has proved to be worth the money, according to a paper published this month in npj Health Systems The research found that 60% of Cleveland Clinic’s clinicians who used the AI scribe agreed it increased their likelihood of remaining in practice. This is a key data point — and a crucial metric for hospitals to focus on when it comes to their clinical AI deployments, given they spend millions per year on recruitment and retention efforts amid an ongoing workforce crisis.
The paper also reported 97% clinician satisfaction and 70% encounter-level utilization among established users one year after Cleveland Clinic’s rollout.
That is a stark departure from the large tech projects in the past. Many physicians still hold onto unpleasant memories from the dawn of the EHR era, in which the new technology was overwhelming viewed as more headache than help, noted Eric Boose, Cleveland Clinic’s associate chief medical information officer.
One of the reasons that the Ambience rollout was different was because the health system framed it as a gift rather than mandate, Boose pointed out. Clinicians weren’t required to see more patients or take on additional work in exchange for access to the tool — it was simply theirs to use if they wanted to try it out.
Getting clinicians up and running quickly was just as important as getting buy-in, Boose said. Cleveland Clinic offered live virtual training sessions three times a day so that clinicians could complete onboarding whenever their schedules allowed. They also added an on-demand training option for those, like surgeons, who couldn’t make a live session work.
Once physicians tried the tool on one or two patients, most were quickly convinced, Boose declared.
“Everybody has some healthy skepticism, as they should, about using a new tool in the patient care space,” he said. “But once they used it, I think we were all a little bit floored — like, wow, this really can be very helpful and save us a lot of time.” Boose noted that type of early hands-on experience will always be more effective than any top-down messaging.
Quantifying the technology’s return on investment took more work.
Some of it was straightforward. Ambience’s platform also generates coding and billing suggestions, which helps ensure clinicians are reimbursed for the full scope of the care they delivered— which is a feature Boose said helped offset the cost of adopting the tool.
But the rest of the ROI picture was softer and more difficult to assign a dollar figure to. Cleveland Clinic surveyed clinicians directly to track measures like burnout and how much time the tool was saving them outside of their scheduled working hours.
Several clinicians told the health system they planned to continue working full time or delay retirement because of the tool, according to Boose. To him, that retention signal carries real financial weight for a health system that would otherwise have to recruit and train replacements.
This type of response to ambient AI has spread well beyond Cleveland Clinic, Boose added. As AI scribes become more widely adopted, he said they will likely evolve from a differentiator into something physicians expect their employer to offer.
Photo: MoMo Productions, Getty Images