Leaders at Mount Sinai Health System in New York believe Microsoft is the winner in the world of environmental writing, for now.
The health system began implementing Microsoft’s ambient listening technology, called Dragon Copilot, in November. The tool listens to doctor-patient conversations during visits and automatically generates clinical notes, which doctors can quickly review, edit and sign in the EHR.
Implementation is taking place in phases and approximately 500 physicians currently use the tool. Mount Sinai’s goal is to have 1,500 users onboarded by spring, said Robbie Freeman, the health system’s director of digital transformation.
He noted that other members of the clinical care team, not just physicians, will have access to the tool as part of the launch, such as nurse practitioners, physician assistants and pharmacists.
Currently, deployment is primarily in outpatient settings, with some use of emergency departments and urgent care. But as time goes on, the technology will move more into critical care settings, Freeman added.
From the data Mount Sinai has collected so far, it’s too early to say whether the tool has significantly reduced the hours doctors spend on documentation, he said.
“The jury is still out. We’ve been looking at things like the quality of the documentation, what we’re capturing. Some organizations are saying, ‘just try to include more and more visits.’ That’s not how we look at it. We’re looking at it really holistically: improving the quality. When we improve the quality of the documentation, that means we can get credit for everything that’s happening and get reimbursed appropriately. That helps make a sustainable business case,” Freeman explained.
Mount Sinai is also “thinking deeply” about how this technology can become a more seamless experience in different care settings.
“So an example of that is, as we renovate our hospital rooms, we think we’ll be able to incorporate ambient listening, as you’ll see today, but also things like computer vision to help support quality, safety and the patient experience,” Freeman said.
Another item on the roadmap is adding insurance-related features, such as the ability to submit prior authorization requests for certain tests and procedures, to Microsoft’s implementation. Mount Sinai has raised its hand to be an early adopter once these capabilities are ready, Freeman said.
Before choosing Microsoft, Mount Sinai evaluated the company along with two other vendors in the crowded environmental writing space, conducting brief pilot tests and gathering feedback through qualitative surveys of clinicians who tested the tools. Lisa Stump, Mount Sinai’s chief digital information officer, named the other two vendors: Abridge and Suki.
“At the time, Suki was technically in a different place, so we couldn’t really launch a full pilot. They’ve come a long way since then, but our timing was such that it didn’t align. And Microsoft and Abridge were relatively close,” he said.
Mount Sinai then had to make a business decision based on contractual terms and shared partnership goals, and Microsoft ended up outperforming Abridge, Stump explained.
He also noted that Mount Sinai has been “completely transparent” with Microsoft that their partnership may change given Epic’s launch of a built-in AI graphics tool earlier this month.
“We will evaluate the Epic solution. They are also our platform partner. We believe the market will continue to evolve and we will evaluate those options, but we are incredibly grateful for all the partnership and innovation that brought the entire market to where it is,” Stump stated.
Photo: Abraham González Fernández, Getty Images