Nuance and Cerner Partner to Offer Point of Care Solution for Clinical Documentation Improvement

Nuance and Cerner partner to offer point of care solution for clinical documentation improvement to drive enhanced CDI processes directly within Cerner Millennium®

Nuance Communications, Inc. and Cerner Corporation today announced that Cerner will incorporate Nuance’s clinical documentation improvement (CDI) technology and professional services to help clinicians seamlessly create the most accurate and complete clinical documentation at the point of care. The integrity of clinical documentation is a critical component of a providers’ overall information management strategy and is directly tied to improved patient care, appropriate reimbursement, quality reporting and enhanced compliance.

As healthcare providers look to confront the drastic changes brought on by regulatory mandates such as ICD-10, value-based purchasing and various quality reporting initiatives, they’re increasingly realizing the vital role clinical documentation plays in their information management strategy and across various patient and business touch points in their organizations.

At a recent Office of the National Coordinator HIT Policy Committee meeting, the pressing need to address current clinical documentation programs was further reinforced by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). Citing growing adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and initial progress toward an era of information sharing across healthcare systems, AHIMA reinforced the need to establish immediate clinical documentation best practices.

“To ensure the integrity of the information going into the electronic health record, clinicians need both technology and guidance that doesn’t interrupt their workflow,” said Max Reinig, senior vice president of Physician Solutions for Cerner. “By integrating Nuance’s clinical documentation improvement content and automated decision-support technology with our EHR and Cerner Care Management solution, clinicians will be presented with a seamless workflow that ensures the quality of physician documentation.”

The integration of Nuance’s CDI solution within Cerner’s EHR and Revenue Cycle solutions will help healthcare providers improve the quality and accuracy of their clinical documentation in real-time at the point of care, supporting both clinicians’ and CDI specialists’ workflows. The technology will be used concurrently to give feedback to physicians on the information needed to complete the record and will provide CDI specialists with the tools necessary to improve their analysis of the physician’s documentation.

In line with this partnership, Cerner will deliver the following solutions powered by Nuance technology and services:

• Cerner Care Management – Powered by Nuance’s proven J.A. Thomas CDI content and compliant documentation management program, this integrated solution will provide specialized content necessary for modeling a more specific working Diagnosis-Related Group resulting in a more efficient workflow and increased productivity for the clinical documentation specialist. This solution automates and supports the workflow of the CDI specialist within Cerner PowerChart®, the clinician’s view of Cerner’s EHR.
• The Cerner Document Quality Review (DQR) Module – Powered by Nuance’s Computer-Assisted Physician Documentation (CAPD) solution, the DQR module facilitates complete, accurate and concurrent documentation by automating the CDI process. Physicians will interact with CDI clarifications and findings real-time at the point they are writing their notes. This will greatly improve both physician productivity as well as the integrity of their documentation and the discrete information captured within PowerChart, Cerner’s EHR.

“Expanding our partnership will enable providers to tackle the complexity of clinical documentation with the simplicity of a best in class solution that integrates our J.A. Thomas CDI expertise and voice-enabled clinical language understanding technology with Cerner’s market-leading electronic health record,” said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Healthcare. “What’s truly unique about Nuance’s solution is that we embed the CDI process directly in the physician workflow so information gaps are addressed immediately while the physicians are documenting instead of days or even weeks after the patient visit.”

To learn more about how this Nuance-Cerner partnership will help simplify the complexities of clinical documentation and streamline information management for healthcare providers, please visit booth #4025 and #4941 at HIMSS 2013.