Introduction
They say small can be beautiful, and for many healthcare providers running a private practice is the ultimate goal of all those years of study, training, and sacrifice. Owning and operating a small clinic of one’s own — deciding where to locate and what communities to serve — can be a dream come true.
The advantages can be many. According to the American College of Physicians (ACP) sole providers enjoy autonomy and a limited patient base, enabling them to “develop close, personal relationships with your patients and staff and provide your own unique style of medical care.”
Private practices also play an important role in healthcare because of their location. The ACP notes, “Suburban or rural areas are often better suited for solo practice because of significant medical need and less competition from other medical resources.” That matters because, as a 2007 study in Health Care Management Review concluded, “both utilization and disease burden increased as distance increased” from a patient’s primary care provider.
But a small, private practice also comes with many challenges. While ensuring delivery of quality medical care is the top priority, the doctor in private practice — usually assisted by a small staff — must oversee the office and manage administrative and financial tasks.
To ensure optimal patient outcomes and long-term sustainability, private practices must carefully weigh healthcare IT decisions. Choices that might represent minor considerations for large organizations with deep pockets and lots of resources become crucial for sole providers who must make every hour and every minute of each day count.
Role of an AI medical scribe in a private practice
A 2018 article in the American Association for Physician Leadership highlights an ongoing decline in the numbers of small, independent physician practices, meaning those with between one and four providers.
Between 1983 and 2014, the AAPL found, practices of 10 or fewer physicians decreased from 80% of all practices to 60%. And of that group, those defined as small — one to four providers — accounted for just 19%.
Despite those trends, many doctors — and their patients — continue to prefer being independent. And the increasing availability of powerful, sophisticated, and affordable healthcare IT tools are helping them maintain their position in the market.
While human medical scribes have long played a critical role in practices of all types and sizes, the advent of AI-powered medical scribes are delivering the same benefits with greater speed and at lower cost.
By transcribing patient encounters and creating accurate draft Progress Notes, they give doctors a head start on their documentation and allow them to focus on the patient over the computer.
Just as importantly, they allow doctors to improve work-life balance by reducing or eliminating the hours they spend on documentation after the office closes.
Sunoh.ai’s role in empowering small practice providers
Dr. Joel Keenan, owner of Maine’s York Primary Care, exemplifies such small practices.
As he told Healthcare Innovation recently, all the core functions of a small primary care practice — including faxes, billing, and documentation of visits — are being handled efficiently and effectively with software from eClinicalWorks.
AI-powered medical scribes matter to practices such as York Primary Care because they can save hours each day on documentation.
For Dr. Keenan, Sunoh represents a powerful tool to save time and remain focused on providing quality care.
“When I’m on the phone or having a telehealth visit with a very complex patient who’s got a lot of issues,” he told Healthcare Innovation, “then it’s really good for me to use it because she and I can just talk for 20 minutes, and I’ve got a really detailed history of present illness.”
Key benefits of an AI medical scribe
- Uninterrupted patient care: ai allows providers to give their 100% undivided attention to patients without having to worry about documentation.
- Improves follow-up care: ai improves the completeness of progress notes, thereby improving follow-up care. Also, providers now have better memory of their conversation with the patients as they were fully focused during the patient visit.
- Improve patient-provider relationships: Face-to-face interaction improves the patient’s experience of care and thereby strengthens their relationship with their provider.
- Improves provider satisfaction: ai reduces the risk of provider burnout, improving productivity and enabling practices to improve work-life balance.
Conclusion: The AI medical scribe and in-person medicine
Whether a given organization is large or small, has many providers or just one, there is no doubt that the nation needs a variety of medical providers to effectively deliver care to all in need. Leveraging technologies such as AI medical scribes provides a vital assist to organizations that have long struggled with the burdens of documentation.
While remote, telehealth services have gained an important place in medicine — one whose value was underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic — the in-person medical encounter seems likely to continue as the mainstay of care for years to come.
That is why AI-powered medical scribes that can produce fast, highly accurate draft notes for providers of all kinds have such value. They are enabling doctors to stop worrying about a computer keyboard, screen, and mouse and focus their full attention on the patient during an encounter.
Last May, the American Journal of Medicine published a short study titled “Face-to-Face Versus Digital Encounters in the Clinic” that laid out some of the key advantages that in-person visits offer. They noted:
- “The physical presence of a well-trained provider establishes a sense of empathy, warmth, and connection that cannot be replicated through digital means.”
- “Nonverbal cues such as eye contact, facial expressions, and other body language contribute to effective communication and understanding between the parties involved.”
- “The personal touch of face-to-face visits often results in a stronger doctor-patient relationship, thus leading to enhanced patient satisfaction and engagement.”
Book a Sunoh.ai demo today
Sunoh.ai converts the natural-language conversations between healthcare providers and patients into clinical documentation. Providers complete their daily documentation in less time and are able to conduct more in-depth and meaningful conversations with their patients during encounters.
Sunoh is a multilingual product, supporting documentation in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, and is EHR-agnostic. It can be integrated with any Electronic Health Record.
Learn more today! Book a demo with Sunoh.ai.