In healthcare, there’s something called “Pajama Time,” but unfortunately, it’s not nearly as much fun as it sounds.
Pajama Time is actually the opposite of fun, as it refers to the many late nights when practicing physicians have to complete all their paperwork for the day. Much of this work tends to be the detailed reports they need to write up for each of the patients they saw earlier.
There must be a better way, right? And there is.
Enter AI.
Denver Health, which is Colorado’s primary safety-net health system, offers healthcare to, among others, the uninsured, the underinsured, and those who have limited access to care. As the health system’s website puts it, “Denver Health remains committed to providing health care to our community regardless of the ability to pay.”
As well-meaning as that mission is, it sounds like a recipe for severely overworked physicians. Given that reality, Denver Health embarked upon an eight-week pilot program to test Nabla, an AI transcription tool, with the goals of improving patient care, physician well-being, and operational efficiency.
Based on initial reports, those goals were met.
In fact, according to Dr. Daniel Kortsch, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer & AI Officer for Denver Health, these goals were met almost immediately. He reports that health care providers experienced “improved face-to-face interactions and noted considerable improvements with work-life balance” within days of using the ambient AI assistant tool.
During the eight-week pilot, Nabla was used in more than 6,000 patient visits, and as the company reports,
Clinicians participating in the pilot experienced a 40% reduction in note-typing per patient encounter, a 13% reduction in Pajama Time, and 82% of participants felt less time pressure per visit. Pilot data also shows a significant improvement in patient satisfaction scores by 15 points as patients report improved doctor-patient communication [emphasis added].
Dr. Kortsch goes on to describes the striking effect that use of Nabla has had on Denver Health’s physicians: “I still receive spontaneous hugs from our doctors expressing their gratitude for the way Nabla has improved their working lives. On a broader scale, this partnership enables us to streamline our processes and treat more patients."
Following the pilot program, Denver Health quickly adopted Nabla, with 400 clinicians signing up for the ambient AI assistant within the first week of deployment system-wide. At the end of the first month of deployment, close to 16,000 clinician-patient encounters used Nabla.
For a healthcare system as large as Denver Health, which has over 8,300 employees and serves 207 Denver public schools, the long-term benefits of using Nabla – for both clinicians and patients – are likely to be immense.
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As a postscript, the origins of Denver Health are just as fascinating as the changes taking place there today. The integrated health system dates back to 1860, when it got its start as a log cabin that was declared “City Hospital.” This was a full 16 years before Colorado became a state in 1876, and it was one year before the Territory of Colorado became officially recognized. From 1859-1861, Denver was considered the capital of the unrecognized (and therefore, illegal) Jefferson Territory.
City Hospital’s first surgery patient was one Dr. J.S. Stone, an influential judge in Central City. He had been badly shot in a shotgun duel by F.W. Bliss, the acting governor of the unrecognized Jefferson Territory. Dr. Stone’s arm was successfully amputated, but unfortunately, he died from complications seven months later.
Denver Health’s website describes the overall scene in Denver 150+ years ago as fairly chaotic, to say the least:
The health demands of Denver in the late 1800s were just as significant and momentous as they are today. Violence, crime, poverty and sickness were rampant. After arduous weeks of crossing the country in covered wagons families, prospectors, settlers and gamblers arrived in Denver exhausted and sick; the majority with no money in their pockets.
These “bummers,” as they were coined, wreaked havoc on the Denver territory after going bust in the gold mines of the Rocky Mountains. Claims wars, murders, shootouts and looting became commonplace on the dirt packed streets of Denver. It was those violent crimes, along with the fear of a smallpox epidemic, typhoid and other rampant contagious diseases, that encouraged a pair of newly arrived physicians to open the first city hospital – what we know today as Denver Health.
