Transforming Healthcare Documentation: A Case Study of Kittitas Valley Healthcare
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Virtual Private Cloud
- Wearables - Virtual Reality Glasses, Headsets & Controllers
Applicable Industries
- Education
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Time Sensitive Networking
- Virtual Training
Services
- Testing & Certification
- Training
The Customer
Kittitas Valley Healthcare
About The Customer
Kittitas Valley Healthcare (KVH) is a small regional rural health system situated in the heart of Washington State. It provides patient-centered care through its hospital, clinics, and specialty services. KVH Hospital provides 24-hour emergency care and offers inpatient and outpatient hospital services. KVH also provides care through clinics and specialty services in both Upper and Lower Kittitas County. KVH sees 400 patients per day in its clinics. As a rural health system, KVH understands the importance of providing its clinicians with the support they need to maintain quality outcomes, reduce costs, and improve the patient experience—the Triple Aim of health care.
The Challenge
Kittitas Valley Healthcare (KVH), a small regional rural health system in Washington State, was grappling with the challenge of excessive administrative burdens on its clinicians. Studies have shown that clinicians in medium-sized hospitals spend about 44% of their time on documentation and only 24% on direct patient contact. This was largely due to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS), which required clinicians to document a wide range of data for billing verification. This system turned clinicians into data-entry clerks, documenting not only diagnoses, clinician orders, and patient visit notes, but also an increasing amount of low-value administrative data. KVH was using scribes to assist providers with documentation and data entry into the Electronic Medical Records (EMR). However, due to its rural location, KVH was struggling to recruit and retain high-performing scribes. The training for these scribes could take six to eight months and was not very effective in reducing high scribe turnover rates.
The Solution
To address this challenge, KVH decided to use virtual scribes from Augmedix. These virtual scribes are specially trained to work in both acute and non-acute environments, acting as an always-present assistant to the clinician, converting real-time clinician-patient conversations into precise medical documentation. They are experienced in most EMRs, which improves accuracy, increases the quality of documentation, and ensures timely charge capture for faster reimbursement. Virtual scribes can also place orders for testing, medications, and labs to keep patients moving along the care continuum. KVH created a unique model to begin the roll-out of virtual scribes through a “memorandum of understanding” with its clinicians. In order to qualify for a scribe, clinicians must become productive enough to cover the cost of the service creating a dual incentive. The system also created a work group to present the clinicians the financial case around the business of healthcare to clinicians.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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