Augmedix, co-founded in 2012 by millennial entrepreneurs Ian Shakil and Pelu Tran out of Stanford University, streams audio and visual information to a medical scribe in India or San Francisco who updates the patient’s electronic medical record, a necessity in today’s Affordable Care Act era.
“It’s like having a scribe in the room with you,” said Dr. Terri Nauenberg, division head for primary care at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Palo Alto, part of Sutter Health.
She wasn’t sold on the idea at first.
“I was terrified,” she admitted, “but patients were grateful.”
Nauenberg used to spend a third of her day at the computer, turning away from patients to type and update records, but no more.
Sutter Health is among the first six adopters of the technology, according to company officials, and is ahead of others in terms of the number of doctors involved.
The technology allows doctors to view the patient’s entire medical record and patients can log in to read the notes.
Last week, Nauenberg shared results from an 18-month pilot project involving 10 Palo Alto physicians: Notes completed in less than five minutes 84 percent of the time, doctor productivity up 15 percent and patient acceptance of 96 percent.
Typically the same scribe is matched with the same doctor, and Nauenberg noted patients preferred the technology over a scribe in the room.
“There’s a perception if you’re not making eye contact, you’re not paying attention,” said Trish Burgin, urgent care clinical manager for Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Santa Cruz.
“Patients like it,” said Debbie Smallwood, a physician assistant in Santa Cruz, reporting only three patients turned down the technology.
She can print out a summary for patients after the visit and now has time to respond to patients throughout the day.
“It’s really nice to have all that discussion documented, especially with complicated patients,” said Dr. Cynthia Hill, an urgent care physician in Santa Cruz, after three days of wearing Google Glass with Augmedix.
Her scribe, Devendra Kumar in Delhi, told her, “We are trained medical transcriptionists working 15 years” and “we have our own workspaces, we work independently.”
Tran, 27, who has three months left to complete his medical degree, contends Augmedix can enable a doctor to see one to one-and-a-half more patients per day.
That’s a significant benefit when physicians are in short supply.
Indeed, multiple openings are available for doctors in emergency or family medicine to join the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Urgent Care department in Santa Cruz.
The new technology has not been all smooth sailing.
There have been some IT drops where upgrades are needed but Nauenberg envisions a day when primary care doctors can make referrals to the “dermatologist of the day” or a gastroenterologist via technology without the help of a receptionist or a medical assistant.
Augmedix, which has attracted $23 million in venture funding and grown to 700 employees, was named by FastCompany.com as the most innovative health care company of 2016.
©2016 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
