Most rural hospitals simply don’t have the resources to adopt AI at the same rate as other hospitals, so they oftentimes have to wait to deploy the tools that other hospitals are benefiting from, such as prior authorization automation software or clinical documentation assistants.
This week, a new partnership was launched to address that problem. Meditech — an EHR vendor that targets rural hospitals — announced that it is integrating Suki’s AI assistant into more than a dozen rural health systems, including St. Mary’s Healthcare in New York and Decatur County Memorial Hospital in Indiana.
With this integration, the partners are seeking to democratize access to AI-assisted clinical documentation for doctors in rural areas who missed out on the first wave of deployments. Having access to Suki’s tool could dramatically reduce their administrative workload — last month a Dr. Missy Scalise, a physician at Ascension Saint Thomas in Tennessee told MedCity News that her use of Suki’s AI assistant has given her back precious hours in the day, which she can now spend with her family. Before the technology was introduced, it used to take hours to do clinical notes manually, meaning she would constantly be taking her work home with her, she said.
Redwood City, California-based Suki seeks to lighten the documentation burden through its AI-powered voice assistant for physicians. By calling out to Suki’s AI assistant, a physician can quickly access key information about their patient, such as their medications, vital signs, allergies or surgical histories. Physicians can also use Suki’s tool to do things like dictate clinical notes, pull up their weekly schedule and assist with ICD-10 coding.
Suki’s assistant can also generate clinical notes from ambiently listening to a conversation between a physician and their patient. These notes are automatically sent back to the patient’s EHR so that the physician can review and make any necessary changes before finalizing it.
Suki serves nearly 300 health systems and clinics, said CEO Punit Soni.
In his view, Suki’s tool is different from other AI-powered clinical documentation tools on the market, such as those sold by Abridge and DeepScribe, for a few reasons — the first being that it is an AI assistant, not just an AI scribe.
“Suki does ambient documentation but can do much more, including coding, dictation and answering questions like ‘What medications is my patient taking?’ We’ll continue to increase the scope of tasks Suki can handle, including pre-visit summaries, orders and more so that eventually Suki can help with every administrative task,” Soni explained.
He added that Suki has “the most expansive EHR integrations,” noting that the company uses “every available integration pathway” to build a seamless product. Suku works with Epic, Oracle-Cerner, Meditech and Athenahealth.
Soni also noted that Suki’s product works across a wide variety of care settings, including ambulatory, emergency, inpatient, home health and telehealth.
“Suki is also the only solution that works on all devices — iOS, Android, web and desktop. We’ve invested in making Suki the most scalable solution so that any clinician who wants to use Suki can,” he pointed out.
The company believes that AI can meaningfully address clinician burnout and therefore should be a tool that every doctor has access to, regardless of whether or not their employer has deep pockets, Soni declared. He said that belief is the reason why Suki struck its partnership with Meditech.
Julie Demaree — executive director of clinical innovation and transformation at St. Mary’s, one of the hospitals gaining access to Suki’s tool through the Meditech integration — said that doctors are grateful for the tool, as it allows them to focus on their patients.
“We have a great team of providers at St. Mary’s Healthcare, and none of them went into medicine to write notes or sit behind a computer. They love taking care of patients. The more we are able to support that relationship and remove the things that take away from what feels like ‘providing care,’ the better,” she remarked.
As the head of innovation at her organization, Demaree said her ultimate goal is to keep doctors in the field. Preventing burnout means prolonging clinicians’ retirement, protecting patients’ access to care and maintaining patient relationships with their providers, she noted.
St. Mary’s Healthcare faces financial and access challenges typical of all rural providers, Demaree pointed out. The counties that the health system serves lack specialists and subspecialists, so primary care providers are managing many patients’ complex conditions, she said.
By implementing Suki’s tool, St. Mary’s was able to alleviate some of its providers’ administrative burden without requiring significant investment in new equipment or infrastructure, Demaree declared.
“Small, independent hospitals like ours often can’t afford the implementation fees or hardware and infrastructure required to implement new technology. We are nimble in decision-making and processes however, and this allows us to quickly adopt and implement technologies that can paralyze larger systems,” she stated.
To her, this agility makes it easier for small hospitals like hers to adopt innovative solutions effectively.
Photo: Natali_Mis, Getty Images
