Company
Dignity Health - Dr. Palakurthy
Company Size
Small-size
Commure Products Used
About the Company
Meet Dr. Neel Palakurthy, an internal medicine specialist based in Santa Cruz, CA at Dignity Health. Delivering exceptional patient care comes first for Dr. Palakurthy, yet he faced an all-too-common challenge: the relentless demands of medical documentation. With too much time spent on charting, he needed a better solution, one that would let him spend more time with patients and less time on administrative tasks. Two years ago, Dr. Palakurthy made a transformative decision that would profoundly impact his medical practice: switching from another AI-driven solution to Commure Scribe. Today, the burden of documentation has been significantly reduced, allowing Dr. Palakurthy to engage in more meaningful conversations with his patients. Not only has this improved the quality of care he delivers, but it also enables him to see more patients throughout the week.
Situation
Commure Scribe in Internal Medicine: More Productive Patient Interactions
Since the inception of electronic health records (EHRs), clinicians have found themselves challenged to balance patient needs with the demands of administrative work such as medical charting. In fact, clinicians now spend up to one-third of their workday completing medical charting, which often can’t be finalized until after working hours. For healthcare organizations, this means less time spent on billable tasks and ultimately higher rates of burnout and attrition.
Before integrating Augmedix's pioneering ambient documentation platform into his practice, Dr. Palakurthy used another AI-driven solution for basic charting needs. Unfortunately, he was not seeing the anticipated results. “I would pull up the chart and still end up doing a lot of typing. The tool was not user-friendly and required me to log in constantly throughout the workday. Not being able to dictate between patients was frustrating,” he shared. What Dr. Palakurthy needed was a reliable solution that could provide real-time medical notes, one that is agile to his own workflow and helps make the most of individual patient interactions.
Action
Balancing patient needs with the demands of administrative work.
The Commure Scribe platform is AI-powered, using technologies including generative AI to help clinicians develop medical notes without having to type directly in the chart. It captures the natural conversations between clinicians and patients, automatically formatting the notes for review. When Dr. Palakurthy switched to Commure Scribe, it put an end to his repetitive manual data entry tasks. Advanced natural language processing capabilities and large language models enable Commure's technology to extract clinically relevant data from patient interactions. Information such as types of symptoms, patient history, and current medications are all dynamically populated into structured medical notes, simplifying the integration with EHRs. Commure Scribe runs discreetly in the background via a mobile device, making it invisible at the point of care. While Dr. Palakurthy meets with each patient, Commure drafts chart reviews, making sign off faster than ever. With Commure Scribe, Dr. Palakurthy also has the highest level of service, where a Medical Documentation Specialist (MDS) becomes an extension of his care team. Dr. Palakurthy’s Commure MDS communicates with him in real time through two-way messaging and delivers critical ancillary services such as pending orders, referrals, and reminders.
Result
Less time charting and more time connecting directly with patients to address their medical concerns.
Before switching to Commure, Dr. Palakurthy spent a significant amount of time discussing a patient’s history to uncover information that might be medically relevant to symptoms such as syncope. Having the HPI information available to him within Commure allows him to focus on the immediate needs of the patient for more rapid diagnosis. “With the EHR, you’re so focused on getting this checklist of things done. The ability to look at a patient and dictate their history, rather than charting it and staring at the computer—there's a definite benefit to that.”
Since Dr. Palakurthy began using Commure Scribe; he has spent less time charting and more time connecting directly with patients to address their medical concerns. Augmedix saves him up to three hours per day on charting every week in the office and helps him capture more billable time on patient encounters. In addition to having more time in the office, Dr. Palakurthy estimates that he saves up to four additional hours every weekend. His diligent approach to patient care lets him use this extra time to respond to patient messages, fill out prescriptions, or take personal time. Commure also ensures that each patient visit is billed properly. The platform reduces time spent on unbillable point-of-care support, including reminders, coding, orders, and referrals while increasing wRVU capture, maximizing potential revenue from each encounter. Dr. Palakurthy is now able to be more productive throughout the workday, and no longer worries about being behind on medical documentation.
With Commure, Dr. Palakurthy has reduced the amount of time spent charting by 41% and saves an estimated 350 hours on medical charting annually. With support in over 50 different specialties, Commure provides healthcare organizations with the means to achieve a higher volume of patients, happier clinicians, attentive care, and greater revenue.
