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Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

globalnews.ca

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Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#121

Post by randomdata »

puttycat wrote: post #60
flakeoil wrote: post #35

How about improving the processes and reduce the amount of forms and admin work instead?

This is another version of "use public transport instead of throwing billions on futile self driving cars" -- it's the correct, rational thing to do, but it's not the American way!

Humorously public transport, for all intents and purposes, only service cities. The very place you don't need transit as you already live within walking distance of everything. There is absolutely no rationality there.

Connecting every last rural area by train may have been a thing in the 1800s, but it's not really all that efficient to fire up a humungous train to carry one person. We aren't going back. "Correct and rational" doesn't exactly stand here either.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#122

Post by technofiend »

tim333 wrote: post #113
forgetfreeman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but you can't get that genie back in the bottle. Once these data are made available to private industry it's only a matter of lobbyists chipping away at whatever protections were initially legislated. See Also: your TV, phone, car, fucking doorbell, and fridge are all spying on you.

The HIPPA rules on health data are fairly strict, otherwise your doctor, hospital and so on could already be doing wrong. Personally I have a dumb TV, car, doorbell and fridge so not much spying there. The phone I'm less sure of.

HIPPA rules are easily circumvented unless you as a patient are paying attention: I can't tell you how many forms I've opted out of that wanted to explicitly export my data to third parties and partners that are not HIPPA compliant. And at least for my healthcare providers that use MyCharts, they like to make it part of the echeckin workflow, with no option to refuse. So you're forced to go up to the desk to check in and explicitly reject it each and every time. It's a healthcare dark pattern.

And then there are online providers like better health that don't have the option to opt out at all. So you just have to avoid them entirely.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#123

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

xyst wrote: post #92

As a person that used to be a “human scribe” but for emergency dept doctors. I would say the ER doctors shared the same experience as the one depicted in the news story. For a doctor that was nearing the age of retirement or had very poor keyboard proficiency. scribes were a godsend. Doctors worried less about documentation and focused more on patient care. Of course they still wrote things like admission orders, pre…

>> Documenting it so that it can be billed appropriately is also crucial.

This is literally the only reason why scribes, or pretty much any EMR exist.

EMRs are an accounting tool. To avoid "down coding" and legal exposure . Plain and simple.

There's a reason that doctors would not adopt EMRs for the longest time (at least in the US, don't know other nations) until actual legislation was passed to force them to do so, else get shut out of Medicare.

The EMR, and therefore most note-taking, is not as value add to the patient, or doctor. Its just the only way the doctor will be paid.

The EMR of the future will not have an encounter in a computer. It will be computerless. AI will be acting like zapier between payor APIs, doctor's invoicing, and the patient's chart.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#124

Post by josephrmartinez »

Here is a similar open source project: https://github.com/josephrmartinez/soapscribe

Just a starting point. But if you are interested in this space, fork away and build it into something useful!

My personal take is that the current tools on the market are too expensive. The cost should go way, way down. This should stay open source. Patients should have easy access to full audio recordings and transcriptions of their medical appointments. One can dream!

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#125

Post by karencarits »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #123
xyst wrote: post #92

As a person that used to be a “human scribe” but for emergency dept doctors. I would say the ER doctors shared the same experience as the one depicted in the news story. For a doctor that was nearing the age of retirement or had very poor keyboard proficiency. scribes were a godsend. Doctors worried less about documentation and focused more on patient care. Of course they still wrote things like admission orders, pre…

>> Documenting it so that it can be billed appropriately is also crucial. This is literally the only reason why scribes, or pretty much any EMR exist. EMRs are an accounting tool. To avoid "down coding" and legal exposure . Plain and simple. There's a reason that doctors would not adopt EMRs for the longest time (at least in the US, don't know other nations) until actual legislation was passed to force them to do so,…

> The EMR, and therefore most note-taking, is not as value add to the patient, or doctor. Its just the only way the doctor will be paid.

I don't think this is true as proper note-taking and documentation is required by law in many countries where the doctor is not paid per patient/procedure

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#126

Post by swader999 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #123
xyst wrote: post #92

As a person that used to be a “human scribe” but for emergency dept doctors. I would say the ER doctors shared the same experience as the one depicted in the news story. For a doctor that was nearing the age of retirement or had very poor keyboard proficiency. scribes were a godsend. Doctors worried less about documentation and focused more on patient care. Of course they still wrote things like admission orders, pre…

>> Documenting it so that it can be billed appropriately is also crucial. This is literally the only reason why scribes, or pretty much any EMR exist. EMRs are an accounting tool. To avoid "down coding" and legal exposure . Plain and simple. There's a reason that doctors would not adopt EMRs for the longest time (at least in the US, don't know other nations) until actual legislation was passed to force them to do so,…

My wife is a vet where the legal penalties are far less but she contends that proper medical records are critical, one of her most important asks of colleagues.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#127

Post by awinter-py »

kitd wrote: post #46
awinter-py wrote: post #26

> Lall said it takes minutes for AI Scribe to collate the information, allowing her to move on to other patients while the SOAP note is being created in the background. it takes minutes ...

... which, from TFA, adds up to 19 hours (ie >2 extra working days) per week, time that could be (and is) spent seeing other patients.

no argument with the benefit for doctors. I know docs who say they are squeezed because their day is engineered in a way to force them to do paperwork later

just wondering what computer process takes minutes. is it building the linux kernel every time?

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#128

Post by amkkma »

Pigalowda wrote: post #112
amkkma wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't legally practice as a primary care physician without one year of internship, after which you get unrestricted licensed. If you're unmatched, no internship. Is that not correct?

Yea that’s right. You can scramble separately into 1 year internships. Those are really easy to get - but the unfilled spots are not in happy places. They’re usually more rural and surgical. But like you said if you have a year under your belt you can work in an urgent care or the like.

I didn't realize they had that option. In general, I still find absurdity in what an NP can do vs an unmatched doctor. That's entirely incoherent.

Also, it's laudable what rads is doing, but didn't the AMA lobby for less residency spots?

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#129

Post by ryandrake »

theptip wrote: post #114

This could be the thing that saves the US healthcare system; currently we pay 2x what a normal developed country would pay for the level of service provided, because there is a thick layer of paperwork, with insurance companies going back-and-forth with medical providers to debate and negotiate billing. Imagine if AIs on each side could run that negotiation process in seconds, at the cost of merely a few hundred thou…

Better, more efficient technology rarely reduces the sticker price for customers. If the underlying product or service is cheaper to produce or provide, the price will stay the same (or increase) and the difference will be pocketed by shareholders. This is pretty much always what happens.

Same on the employee side. As an employee, if you adopt some technology that makes you 2X more productive, you're not going to get a 2X compensation increase. That delta will be captured and pocketed by the business.

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