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AI Medical Scribe is a potential solution to avert a fatal medical error by prompting crucial questions, preventing misdiagnosis, and ensuing complications.
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AI Medical Scribe Reducing Error and Patient Deaths in 2024 AI Medical Scribe, a potential solution to avert a fatal medical error by prompting crucial questions, preventing misdiagnosis, and ensuing complications. In one of the most alarming feature stories WebMD has ever published, a writer describes how one medical error caused her to get killed. “if only by asking me the right questions.…this could have alerted [the doctor] to another possible cause”–she says, as she writes about her experience of being wrongfully diagnosed with a mismatch of medication, causing her to suffer from brain swelling and six months of headaches after the stroke. The Problem Doctor-patient Interactions shape the foundation of patient care. Yet, today’s healthcare workplaces do not allow a doctor to have a healthy 1:1 with patients, leading to medication errors, wrong treatment, and eventually, patient deaths. In 1999, a report called To Err Is Human by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that as many as 98,000 hospital patients die every year as a result of preventable errors, including medication mistakes. Why is medical error so common? Medical errors are rooted in 3 big factors:- Physician Burnout Lack of Competent Staff
Inadequate Management of Patient Records Types of Patient-threatening Documentation errors Let’s categorize the types of errors caused by the most common faults in the healthcare industry:- 1st Cause : Physician Burnout and Staff Burden Errors in prescription reading or writing can lead to patients receiving incorrect medications or dosages. Due to patient doctor interaction hampered, Doctors can fail to find out if a patient is allergic to a particular drug or has a condition that can be worsened by medication. – For example – errors in prescription lead to Different drugs that may interact with each other to trigger a problem. Or,the author in the web md article -, “two drugs with similar side effects can amplify the extent of that side effect synergistically.” 2nd Cause: Mismanagement/Miscommunication of Patients' Records Inconsistent or inadequate documentation poses a significant challenge in medical coding for diagnoses like emergency care and pain management. Medical Coders and transcribers must document the specific degrees of pain and other symptoms. There are 2 reasons: Lack of equipment Lack of competent scribes With the wrong diagnosis leading to incomplete documentation, a patient’s accurate code assignment gets hindered. When there is a lack of thorough clinical documentation on the onset, the final stage, contributing factors, and following symptoms of a patient’s underlying illness, medical coders have a difficult time choosing the most accurate codes. This lack of quality in the paperwork might cause inaccurate codes to be assigned, which could result in more severe than optimum patient outcomes and damaged revenue cycles from underpaid or denied claims. Analyzing electronic health records of 2,428 patients in 29 hospitals across the country, they found 550 patients experienced diagnostic errors, or failures to either accurately explain a patient’s health problem or a failure to communicate that information to the patient 3rd Cause: Lack of Adequate Staff Two factors combined together are affecting care service in today’s healthcare services. Aging Population Chronic Diseases Increase: As the number of older people in the population rises, so do chronic illnesses like diabetes, cancer, dementia, and heart disease, which call for more specialized care and resources in the healthcare system. Higher Healthcare Utilization: Compared to the younger population, older individuals utilize more healthcare services, such as home health care, hospital stays, assisted living
facilities, and ambulatory care. Healthcare systems are under pressure to deliver quality care in light of this growing demand. Medicare Reimbursement Influence: The vast majority of senior citizens are dependent on the Medicare scheme, which impacts both the demand and supply of healthcare professionals. Medicare reimbursement guidelines may have an impact on older individuals’ access to and use of healthcare services. The number of people aged 65 and older is expected to reach 83.7 million in 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, up from about 44 million today. Staff Shortages The medical staff is drowned by day to day responsibilities to commit to, including All the data to analyze Insights to act on Patient panels to manage Therefore, coordinating care can consume a lot of valuable time and be affected by a relatively shorter staff. Managing population health internally requires a significant amount of staff time. Unfortunately, as doctors waste time on documentation, their absence produces a vacuum; this lack of clinical expertise in care team optimization makes population health goals become unattainable:- Access to care for patients decreases because of insufficient care outreach Care gaps open wider than the healthy limit Hospital bed days increase for the staff Lack of risk assessment and allergy detection intensifies Life-threatening Consequences On Patient Care Wrong Diagnosis Patients trust their doctors, with their lives faltering everyday with the alarming frequency of diagnostic errors recorded in healthcare. These errors, as study believes is one of the highest recorded errors in the healthcare industry, result in two equally deadly consequences— Delay in treatment Wrong treatment For instance, if a medical scribe inaccurately records a patient’s symptoms or a physician’s assessment due to burnout or lack of attention to detail, it may lead to incorrect treatment plans. Wrong Medications The Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported that medication errors stemming from documentation issues harm at least 1.5 million people in the United States annually. Wrong medication is one of the most common medical errors that occur in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. This, sadly, also arises from the lack of combatting incorrect documentation, leading to wrongful prescription, and eventually, life-threatening consequences from wrongful dosage. Some of the immediate harmful effects on patients:
Adverse drug reactions Unchecked underlying conditions Deteriorating symptoms with delay in diagnosis Failure to treat the condition effectively It has been recorded that errors mostly occur in the miscommunication of medicine names, for example, several look-alike and sound-alike medicines which may also have similar packaging. The most common mix-ups in the medications “epinephrine” and “ephedrine” have led to much patient harm in the past few decades. Similarly, even when they are hospitalized, patients may miss their essential medication, and this can also lead to worsening of the patient’s health. Surgical Errors Inefficiencies in surgical documentation can precipitate grave errors, such as operations on incorrect anatomical sites, leading to dire consequences for patient safety. These lapses may result in misdiagnosis, delayed or inappropriate treatments, and can also engender legal repercussions for healthcare providers. Unnecessary Treatments and Tests The more overlooked side of documentation errors is the risk involved in taking too many medical tests, which has led to uninformed patient health complications, and even deaths. Two of the primary risks behind medical test saturation involves:- A false sense of security, allowing a patient to believe that they are completely healthy, only by receiving normal results to completely unnecessary tests. Excessive radiation exposure while undergoing tests like CT and MRI unnecessarily can lead to increased chances of which is considered dangerous in a patient’s life in the long run, increase their risk of disease like cancer, or even kidney failure. Unnecessary tests due to documentation errors are more common than known in healthcare facilities. In fact, many studies exhibit that $700 billion was spent annually by U.S healthcare centres, on unnecessary medical tests. Lack of Coordination Between Doctors Severe medical mistakes can be caused by inadequate communication between medical personnel. These mistakes can show up as medicinal oversights, when patients receive the wrong drug or dosage, or as erroneous surgical treatments, such incorrect-site operations. Mishandling Patient Allergies Allergic Reactions range from mild to life-threatening. Inaccurate documentation of a patient’s allergy information can lead to the administration of substances to which the patient is allergic, potentially causing severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Loss of Patient Trust Although a lack of trust does not automatically indicate catastrophic consequences, it is nonetheless the fundamental obstacle to the foundation of the patient-provider relationship. Errors in transcription have the potential to undermine patient confidence in the expertise and sincerity of their healthcare providers. Additionally, these errors can harm the standing of medical experts and facilities, making it difficult to draw in and keep patients.
Legal and Financial Consequences Legal action against healthcare organizations and providers due to transcribing errors may result in penalties, higher insurance costs, and even physician license revocation. Although these do not directly impact patient care, they may have an indirect impact by taking funding out of patient services and undermining public confidence in the health care sector. Addressing the Issue: The Solution? The first and foremost NEED of every healthcare organization is to facilitate patient-doctor communication. “It’s just a human thing when you want to be heard in moments that will affect your health care, says Dawn Plested, MBA, J.D., a Minnesota-based consultant. As he adds ”When your health is at risk, it feels like it’s life or death. It sometimes is life or death.” Hence, to reduce avoidable errors and prescription horror, we need to free physicians from attaining non-clinical tasks, like AI medical scribe app. Healthcare organizations must prioritize accurate and efficient medical documentation, not by doctors, but by:- Unlike AI medical scribe, implementing rigorous training programs for human scribes to ensure they possess the necessary skills and knowledge. Utilizing advanced technology, such as AI medical scribe app, which can reduce the likelihood of human error. Unfortunately, the cost of hiring experienced medical scribes who possess the right skills is too high to afford for most small and medium-sized healthcare facilities. Whereas, training inexperienced scribes increase budget costs for healthcare facilities 3 times more the estimated budget cost. But introducing AI medical scribes app will be both cost and time effective. Can AI Medical Scribe Revive Doctor-Patient Interactions? With the efficiency of AI medical scribe and machine learning into the scene of a healthcare workplace, physicians have found themselves being more productive in the actual care sector – Having conversations with patients Performing follow-ups Completing successful surgeries Assigning relevant medical tests and treatments
Bringing Value Based Care with AI The need to coordinate value-based care demands every hospital’s attention in today’s trends of patient care. This promise of value-based care has been fulfilled with the emergence of the AI medical scribe market. From doctors finally finding time to concentrate on their patients, and healthcare administration enhancing their systems, A technological turn LIKE THIS begs one question : How to choose the ideal software that delivers on- Tailoring to your EHR specifications Coordinate with physician specialization Understand ambiguity in patient-doctor interaction This is where RevMaxx AI comes in. Among the leading AI medical scribe software today, RevMaxx AI is powered by a team that is improving the access to care for patients while boosting the productivity of the care teams. Using strategies of machine learning algorithms and medically trained databases, RevMaxx AI Medical Scribe has been built to eliminate the chaos of mismanagement by taking a nuanced approach to managing patient populations. How? Easy to Operate: RevMaxx AI Medical Scribe doesnt disrupt workflows, but enhances them. Understanding technology should never be a hindrance to ease of workflow, and it’s easy to navigate interface helps physicians. Assistance in Detecting Miscommunication: during review process, doctors can easily detect any hint of miscommunications with their patient by looking over RevMaxx generated SOAP notes. High adaptability: RevMaxx AI’s flexible database is meant to work with all the common specialisations in America’s Heathcare Porvider sector, thereby handling your specialty or method of care delivery right out of the box. Closing with the Thought While physicians need technology to drive their efficiency, patients want a physician to guide them through illness to wellness. Even with technology creating the loudest buzz in the healthcare platform, one can clearly agree that no one does patient care better than the physician or nurse with their decades worth of experience and expertise. For this reason, among others, the team behind RevMaxx AI has strategically designed their software for doctors to deliver on the emotional connection. With one round of operation, their AI medical scribe technology delivers all at once: Efficient transcription of conversations into notes Review Oppurtunities for errors Accuracy through trained medical knowledge A personal touch brought by doctors in the realm of technology and AI: Trust You may be a physician contemplating this choice of upgrade, or you may be a patient trying to understand how healthcare is using technology for betting your care. Either way, your takeaway
from this article should be crystal clear : AI as a scribing solution statistically makes a big difference in productivity, accuracy, and patient care. The best solution on the market is the one that enables your staff to do what matters the most: Patient Care.