What You Should Know:
– MCG Health, a part of the Hearst Health network, and Avo, a clinician-created AI platform, have launched a new AI assistant designed to tackle the challenge of hospital length of stay (LOS).
– The partnership integrates recovery milestones from MCG’s proprietary guidelines directly into electronic health record (EHR) workflows using Avo’s new assistant. This tool gives hospitalists and case managers a real-time picture of each patient’s readiness to go home, which can eliminate communication delays and improve outcomes.
Optimizing Length of Stays
Hospitals are under pressure to optimize LOS in a way that is both safe and efficient. Unnecessary hospital days can increase the risk of hospital-acquired infections, create a shortage of beds, and drain hospital resources. The cost of a hospital stay can be around $3,000 per patient per day, so a small reduction in LOS can lead to significant cost savings.
Transforming Discharge Decisions with AI and Evidence-Based Guidelines
The challenge for hospitals is to ensure that patients are discharged appropriately based on recovery milestones. MCG Health, which updates over 5,000 evidence-based clinical guidelines annually, is helping to solve this problem. These guidelines are used by more than 3,100 hospitals and the majority of U.S. health plans to ensure appropriate and cost-effective care.
Traditionally, discharge reviews were conducted manually and often relied on experience to streamline the process. This new product introduces automation and evidence-based analysis, providing hospitalists and case managers with intelligent discharge recommendations and auto-drafted notes.
Pilot Programs Results
The product, which is called Discharge Assist Informed by MCG, is currently live at three pilot sites, including Englewood Health in New Jersey, a large California-based Academic Medical Center on Epic, and Ozarks Healthcare, a MEDITECH customer. Avo is integrated with several EHRs, including Epic, Meditech, and athenahealth.
Dr. Priscilla A. Frase, CMIO and Interim Director of IT at Ozarks Healthcare, said that the new solution will help “condense key information into purposeful documentation to better facilitate our discharge processes”. Dr. Joongheum Park, Chief Product & AI Officer at Avo, added that the partnership with MCG will allow clinicians to feel more confident in the discharge process, which will enable patients to go home sooner and with a lower probability of readmission.
