American Medical Association, rad tech firm partner on AI burnout buster
The American Medical Association announced this month that it’s partnering up with a technology firm that dabbles in radiology in a bid to reduce physician burnout.
Burlington, Massachusetts-based Nuance said it hopes to combine its clinical intelligence platform that aids in doc note-taking with the AMA’s know-how in informatics and physician fatigue. Their ultimate goal, they said, is to pilot solutions that prioritize time spent with patients, rather than cumbersome tasks tied to the electronic health record.
“Documentation overload interferes with patient care and contributes significantly to physician burnout,” AMA CEO James Madara, MD, said in a statement. “Our aim is to explore technology innovation that can reduce this burden and provide physicians more time with patients, not paperwork.”
In their announcement, the two partners highlighted the well-established business case for addressing burnout. One recent study by AMA researchers, they noted, found that this problem snowballs into less time spent with the patient, and doc turnover that cost the U.S. $4.6 billion each year. Another recent study found that nearly half of radiologists say they’re burned out, with “too many bureaucratic tasks” a top driver across all specialties.
Nuance said it hopes to infuse its intelligent charting solution with the learnings on this phenomenon from the nation’s largest physician society to hopefully begin making a dent in this issue.
“Our collaboration with the AMA is another key step toward solving one of the most difficult and high-priority problems facing all of healthcare today—the challenge of reducing physician and other caregiver burnout so that providers can refocus on the patient,” Nuance CEO Mark Benjamin said in a statement.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.