Photo Credit: Style-photography
AI note writing software offers physicians short-term stress relief, but physician stress may shift to employer demand for increased patient quotas.
Note writing AI will provide massive, short-term relief to stressed out physicians. They can effectively disconnect the quality of your notes from your data entry skills. Unfortunately, things will only get worse after a short break from the stress of documentation.
The Burden of EMR & Digital Documentation
The first EMR software was implemented in the early 2000s. The increased stress of digital documentation caused physician burnout rates to jump by 20%. Every study since then has identified documentation burden as the number one cause of physician burnout. EMR destroyed the physician-patient relationship and doctors’ quality of life.
Studies have shown doctors spend twice as much time in the chart as they do face-to-face with patients! Many physicians are forced to complete charts at home after the kids are in bed, which gave popularity to the term “pajama time.”
The AI Breakthrough
Fortunately, writing a high-quality physician visit note is something AI does extremely well.
Large language model software, like ChatGPT, can listen to your patient visit and do an excellent job of writing a note remarkably similar to the one you would type out. Training includes digesting millions of chart notes produced by physicians in your specialty.
We have had coaching clients brought to tears when they see their chart notes appear magically in the time it takes to walk from the exam room to their office. It is quickly and easily accessible and needs only a touch here and there to be final.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take Back Your Practice With the
Training, Weekly Coaching and Tribe of Support Inside
The BurnoutProofMD 3-Layer Physician Support ECOSYSTEM
Get Started for FREE Now
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This software can decrease your “total time in the chart” by up to 50%”. Imagine the software writes your notes, with acceptable quality, in half the time you are taking now. What would that feel like? What would leaving the office 20 minutes after your last patient feel like? What would it feel like never to have to do charts at home again?
It is a true breakthrough. I encourage you to be an early adopter here. If your organization is launching an AI note-writing pilot project, join the study group and get started.
If your company is not implementing AI documentation, grab one of the publicly available programs and use it as a copy and paste alternative to typing your notes. I predict these programs will have 100% adoption rates very quickly. They disconnect the quality of your notes from your data entry skills.
Why Will this Burnout Relief Only Be Short-Term?
With half your documentation time freed up, how long will it take your employer to increase your patient volume quotas? When I ask this question to a live audience, the average answer is “10 minutes.”
In this new high-volume reality, we may look back on the documentation burden as a blessing. You do not see more patients now because you know the encounter is not over until the paperwork is done. The prospect of more work in the chart stops you from finishing another four or five patients.
What happens when we remove that throttle on your patient flow? What happens when you are asked to see four, five …, or ten more patients a shift?
What will become the new kingpin stressor that replaces the documentation burden? All our clinical skills are exhausting, and we already recognize compassion, fatigue, and decision fatigue in doctors.
Burnout results from exhaustion of your physical, emotional, and spiritual energy accounts. If we remove the task of charting, what cognitive barrier will we violate with higher patient volumes? How will burnout change in this unfamiliar environment? The implementation of AI note writing software is inevitable. Increases in patient visits and RVU quotas are inevitable. Burnout will change because of this implementation. My only worry is how physicians will be able to manage this new workload.
