Artificial intelligence innovations in healthcare enable providers to spend more time with patients
Providing healthcare is a labor of love for medical professionals, who understand on a personal level how human connection can greatly enhance a patient’s experience.
In a perfect world, doctors and their support staff would have more time each day to focus on that part of the job. That’s why Montage Medical Group opted in 2023 to invest in cutting-edge technology to help solve an ongoing problem: Research published in July 2022 by the Journal of Internal Medicine determined that a primary care doctor would need to work a mathematically impossible 26.7 hours per day to provide the recommended preventive, chronic, and acute care to a practice with 2,500 adult patients.
The fact is, our primary care doctors are often overwhelmed, and that’s really been a challenging issue to address. We’ve been working very hard through the years to find efficient ways to ease that burden.
— Dr. Mark Carvalho, CEO of Montage Medical Group and President of MoGo Urgent Care
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Easing the burden
“The fact is, our primary care doctors are often overwhelmed, and that’s really been a challenging issue to address,” says Dr. Mark Carvalho, CEO of Montage Medical Group and President of MoGo Urgent Care. “We’ve been working very hard through the years to find efficient ways to ease that burden.”
Help arrived in 2023 in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to scanning patients’ medical records in search of crucial care gaps, a task typically assigned to staff members.
“When a patient has a care gap, it means they haven’t received the care or screening they need to ensure optimal health,” says Meg Dingae, Director of Human Experience for Montage Health.
“For example, we might have a patient who comes to Montage Health for care from an OB/GYN doctor, but also has a primary care doctor who is outside our network,” Dingae says. “She had a pap smear in 2022, but for whatever reason — maybe she forgot, or just didn’t have time — the patient didn’t come back to see us the following year. Missed opportunities to receive important screenings can have a major impact on the health of a patient.”
After discovering care gaps in the charts of 14,000 of its patients — not unusual in American medical systems — Montage Medical Group formed a partnership in 2023 with San Mateo-based Notable Health, creator of software capable of rapidly searching thousands of medical records with lightning speed, using robotic processing automation and AI.
The program received grant support in 2023 from Central California Alliance for Health. The grant, aimed at supporting Medi-Cal patients through technological innovation, adds an extra layer of support to those patients who may be more at risk when it comes to missed screenings or follow-ups.
Targeting five key health issues
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In 2023, the first year of the partnership, Montage Medical Group used Notable Health’s software to locate and address patients’ care gaps for cervical cancer, breast cancer, high blood pressure, colon cancer, and diabetic eye exams.
The technology can address care gaps in three ways. First, if the AI finds evidence that the care gap has already been closed outside the Montage Health system, then the technology can flag the gap for closure by the medical staff; otherwise, the software automatically sends a text message informing that follow-up care is needed and invites the patient to self-schedule their appointment.
“It takes the human out of the equation in a good way,” Dingae says. “Searching thousands of medical charts to find and address care gaps is not high-value work for medical professionals. Exchanging phone messages with patients can take days, which isn’t good for the patient or the staff. Enabling a patient to self-schedule is proving to be a very efficient option. Patients can pick the time they want, and it’s done.”
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AI works 24/7
Another upside, Dingae says, is that the new and advanced technology continuously searches for patients with care gap issues. “So, maybe I’m not overdue for a screening today, but I might become overdue next month. The AI will find that and address it.”
Dingae says her office is evaluating the software’s performance, measuring how many gaps were closed, how many appointments were made by patients through self-scheduling, and other valuable metrics. “I’ll be really interested over this next year in looking at patient-centered and patient-specific outcomes,” she says.
Carvalho says he appreciates the progress he has seen — medical staff have more time to devote to personal patient interaction.
“In 2002, when I started my own primary care practice, I was flipping through all of my own paper charts, trying to keep up to date on my patients,” Carvalho recalls. “If we can do a more efficient job of scanning these charts, and reduce the load on our healthcare providers, these are solutions we really need to leverage. Things have gotten much better because we have new tools at our disposal, but we also need to take it to the next level. If we can find ways to do things faster, easier, and better, that’s what we ought to be doing.”
Learn more about Montage Medical Group.
