Generative AI in the EHR: Powering NextGen® Ambient Assist & restoring clinician well-being

Kenza Bouzoubaa

Brand & Communication Manager

Jeremy Dixon

Vice President of Product Development at NextGen Healthcare

Back in November Nabla announced an exciting integration with NextGen Healthcare, a leading provider of innovative, cloud-based healthcare solutions to power NextGen® Ambient Assist. NextGen Ambient Assist is a fully automated ambient listening solution that delivers clinical notes directly to NextGen Healthcare's electronic health record (EHR) platforms, significantly reducing clinical documentation time.

NextGen Healthcare was one of the pioneers in embracing Generative AI, recognizing its potential to mitigate physician burnout and enhance the overall patient experience.

Generative AI in the EHR

While widespread adoption of EHRs has undeniably improved care coordination, enhanced data accessibility, and streamlined diagnosis, it is also contributing to documentation fatigue and clinician burnout. According to a 2021 study from JAMIA, for every eight hours that office-based physicians have scheduled with patients, they spend more than five hours in the EHR. When it comes to clinical documentation, a study found that writing and reviewing notes takes up 78% of all physician interactions with EHRs. Challenges include data entry, interoperability, cluttered visual display, and diverting attention from patient care among others.

The emergence of Generative AI presents a myriad of opportunities to streamline various stages of the clinical workflow, spanning from clinical documentation and coding to clinical decision support and patient communication.

NextGen Ambient Assist, powered by Nabla

Nabla has been integrated with NextGen Ambient Assist since October 2023, and is already available to nearly 5,000 users of the NextGen Mobile application. NextGen Ambient Assist uses the audio from patient encounters to automatically capture subjective, objective, assessment, and plan (SOAP) notes that help organize providers' observations. These notes are automatically presented in NextGen Mobile for provider review and editing before inclusion in the patient's EHR chart. NextGen Ambient Assist has been shown to save providers an average of 1.5 to 2 hours of documentation per day.
In an effort to address the national shortage of mental and behavioral health professionals, the company also recently announced it was making NextGen Ambient Assist available to psychiatrists and other practitioners in the behavioral health space.

As Nabla and NextGen Healthcare continue to work together to expand ambient AI capabilities in the EHR, we interviewed Jeremy Dixon, Vice President of Product Development at NextGen Healthcare to gain insights into the company’s perspective on our partnership.

Let’s chat!

Kenza: What challenges and industry trends led NextGen Healthcare to seek out an integration with Nabla?

Jeremy: NextGen is committed to materially enhancing the care provider experience and are continuously evaluating opportunities to improve EHR usability and effectiveness. Several of our clients requested to prioritize addressing the documentation burden that weighs heavily on their providers, compelling them to devote extra hours at the clinic or stay up late completing documentation from the previous day. Besides being time consuming, existing live scribing and virtual scribing alternatives are also expensive and adversely impact providers’ ability to be more present with the patient during the encounter. We recognized the potential of AI to comprehensively address these challenges and sought out partners who were developing solutions in this space.

Kenza: Why was this a priority?

Jeremy: Timely access to care providers continues to be a significant challenge in the industry, even as physician shortages and clinician burnout are impacting the supply side of the equation. We prioritized this concern since it has the potential to not only significantly alleviate the documentation burden for providers directly, but to also unlock incremental clinical capacity which is advantageous to both patients and the financial sustainability of the practices we serve.

Kenza: What was NextGen Healthcare looking for in an ambient AI solution for clinical documentation?

Jeremy: We were looking for a partner that was collaborative in nature, with a track record of proven technology capable of addressing the problem in real-time through a fully tech-based solution. Further, we wanted to work with a partner who appreciates the many ethical and security concerns associated with AI usage in the care journey and had the appropriate controls and measures in place to ensure a safe and defensible care experience for our clients and patient communities.

Kenza: How did you find out about Nabla, and why did you choose to partner with us?

Jeremy: We found Nabla during our discovery work when vetting various ambient vendors. Nabla’s vision aligned with our mission to reduce provider documentation time and cognitive load while also meeting stringent standards for security and governance. Nabla’s technology stack is modern and extensible, and the engineering and product teams proved to be agile and highly responsive to our client’s evolving needs.

Kenza: What made our solution stand out over others that you researched?

Jeremy: The strength of the technical stack (API first), the alignment of mission and vision to make a positive impact with healthcare providers, and the overall leadership of the executive team at Nabla. Additionally, the speed at which the product continuously improves reflects a refreshing emphasis on clients’ needs and results-oriented growth model.

Kenza: What have you been most impressed with?

Jeremy: There are many areas that impressed us, but the one that stands out is Nabla’s commitment to understanding the problem space and willingness to engage our end customers to cultivate a deep understanding of their needs and requirements. The technology is capable of standing on its own merits but what differentiates this offering is its customer-centricity.

Kenza: What surprised you the most from working with the Nabla team? What’s it like working with us?

Jeremy: What stands out most is the exceptional collaboration we've experienced while working with Nabla. The strong focus on user feedback is evident in both the way the team swiftly resolves our clients’ queries, as well as their ability to integrate new innovations into the product rapidly and meet the evolving needs of clients.

Kenza: What kind of feedback have you heard from your clients using NextGen Ambient Assist?

Jeremy: Overall, our clients love it. They call it a “game-changing” solution. They say that it allows them to focus on the patient and saves them a lot of time on the backend. Since it is fully integrated within our EHR platform, many of our users have reported they no longer have to take “work” home and are enjoying a better work/life balance. One of our provider clients shared that a typical encounter plus documentation time can take under 10 minutes, so he was able to add five new patients a day. He also noted that it saves their practice money since it costs a lot less than having a virtual or live scribe.

Kenza: How has NextGen Ambient Assist benefited your company and business as a whole?

Jeremy: It has allowed us to take a significant step forward in how we support our clients as trusted partners. By re-imagining the provider experience and solving a real-world problem for our providers that positively impacts their experience while also enhancing care quality, access and practice sustainability we continue to live our vision of delivering better healthcare outcomes for all.

Kenza: How do you envision our partnership moving forward?

Jeremy: While the early returns from our partnership have been tremendous, we are focused on scaling the impact we believe we can deliver across our complete customer base. Further, we are taking the lessons from the real-world deployment of this AI solution into the EHR (i.e., reimagining clinical workflows, physician change management and training, adoption patterns etc.) to shape the next evolution of AI capabilities that will positively impact the provider and patient experience.

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Nabla offers multiple integration options, including a deep white label integration through API that allows EHRs to stay on brand.

For more information on how Nabla integrates with EHRs, click here.