How a Large Behavioral Health System Used Eleos Health to Reduce Manual EHR Clicks By 90% with in-Workflow VoiceAI Solution

---

Clinician churn was affecting client outcomes and staff morale

Like health care organizations across the country, a large behavioral health system located in Tennessee struggled to retain clinical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Turnover of clinical staff reached over 20% which affected client outcomes. Clients wanted consistent care from people they trust. Staff morale suffered as the remaining clinicians took on higher caseloads.

Leadership realized that the turnover was unsustainable and completed a root cause analysis of why clinicians were leaving. They found that the documentation and administrative burden were overwhelming. Most clinicians do not enter the field to fill out paperwork, their goal is to help people. Group sessions were a particular pain point because clinicians must write a general group note as well as a note detailing each client’s participation. Compared to an individual session of the same length, clinicians can spend double or triple the time on documentation. The information requiring entry into the EHR for accurate documentation and billing resulted in a large number of multiple-choice, dropdowns, and boxes. Group sizes and the amount of required information made it difficult for clinicians to accurately recall needed data points.

Eleos Health implemented to reduce clinician burden

Leadership knew they had to reduce documentation time so clinicians could focus on what matters – their clients. The organization began to investigate different solutions to reduce documentation and found that a technological solution was the best option. It was critical that whatever solution was implemented maintained the organization’s high-quality documentation standards.

The solution had to be easy for clinicians to learn and fit seamlessly into the organization’s workflows. Without seamless integration, leadership knew adoption would be poor because clinicians are already required to access a vast number of systems adding to their administrative burden. When difficult technology was implemented in the past, clinicians found workarounds or avoided using the technology altogether.

The organization decided to implement Eleos Health’s ambient Voice-to-Insights technology for group sessions in their intensive outpatient program (IOP). Eleos Health utilizes natural language processing and Voice Artificial Intelligence (AI) to gather insights from the group session. Eleos Health can parse the information from multiple voices to build both a baseline and client note. The clinician can then review the note and make any changes, saving valuable time.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization was delivering IOP in a virtual setting. Eleos Health’s HIPAA compliant software seamlessly integrated with Zoom, their telehealth platform, to gain insights from the session. When the session ended Eleos Health automatically generated a new note in the EHR with the date, time, and participants in the session. It auto-populated the information for the group note and provided a baseline note for the client section. Clinicians did not have to log in to any new technology or systems. All clinicians had to do was log in to the EHR, approve the note, and make any corrections.

The Outcome:
90% reduction in manual actions & 34.2% reduction in documentation time

Over the three-month evaluation period, over 1,000 notes were generated by Eleos Health. The result was a 90% reduction in manual actions in the EHR to generate the note. Total documentation time reduced 34.2%. The largest reduction in documentation time was in the generation of the group section. The median time to complete a group note was reduced by 73.8%. The median reduction in the completion of the client note was 33.3%. Documentation time for group notes went from 12 minutes to less than 8 minutes. Reduction in note time and manual clicks significantly reduced clinician burden and has the potential to increase productivity freeing up time for high-value services.

One of the clinicians that run the virtual IOP group explained, “Taking detailed notes can be challenging especially when there are 8-12 people in a group and everyone has something significant to share especially if I want to bring something to an individual’s attention at a later date. With the use of Eleos, my notes are definitely still detailed, but my notetaking time has decreased. When using Eleos I am able to get the point across a lot faster because it does a lot of the work for me.”

“Using Eleos decreased my note-taking by five minutes per note. For me, that is a significant amount of time that I can use for other tasks and improve my quality of life.”

About Eleos Health

Eleos Health has pioneered the new category of ambient VoiceAI workflow solutions to drive operational and clinical efficiency for behavioral health providers. Eleos’ advanced AI-based Care Intelligence solution runs securely in the background of therapy sessions to digitize auto-generated notes, analyze hundreds of data parameters within each session and provide real-time insights related to the delivery of evidence-based care. This results in clinicians’ ability to see more consumers and improve access to care. Eleos Health leverages this shared knowledge of community therapists, clinicians, academics, hospitals, and researchers to deeply understand what is working for every person and power the future of personalized behavioral health.