Priority Physicians Reduces Charting Time by 70% with Heidi’s AI Medical Scribe

In just 14 weeks of using Heidi, the team at Priority Physicians saved over 100 hours in documentation time

Based in Indiana, Priority Physicians is a premier provider of primary care and concierge medicine in the Midwest. 

Renowned for their leadership in personalized medicine, each physician at the two clinic locations has a cap of 250 patients—just 8% of the patient volume seen in typical primary care practices.

In line with their commitment to delivering attentive and responsive care, the doctors at Priority Physicians conduct a high proportion of their consults via telehealth. They also offer a home visiting service and have a 24/7 on-call roster.

Before using Heidi, staff at both clinics described their documentation time as “excessive.” This resulted in doctors regularly having to stay behind for an hour or more each day to write up notes. 

Furthermore, physicians had begun to feel a tension between ever-increasing administrative requirements and the unique style of medicine that both they and their patients had come to love so much.

After discovering Heidi Health’s AI Medical Scribe, Dr. Shelagh Fraser, Director of Medical Excellence and Innovation at Priority Physicians, became convinced that this tool could result in better work-life balance for her team, and improve quality of care for their patients. 

After a 14-week trial, it was clear Dr. Fraser was right on both counts.

We interviewed Dr. Fraser about Priority Physicians’ experience with Heidi. Key outcomes and insights are detailed below, including how they saved more than 100 hours on documentation and reduced charting time by a staggering 70%.

A full overview of the results from the trial is presented in this article. Or, you can download a 1-page summary of the case study by clicking the button below.

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About Heidi

Heidi is an AI medical scribe powered by ambient listening technology.

While sitting in on a patient encounter (eg., clinic appointments, intake assessments, telehealth sessions, and home visits), Heidi records and analyzes the conversation between clinician and patient.

Once the appointment is finished, the practitioner can instruct Heidi to instantly generate editable clinical documents utilizing the data from the appointment.

These might include things like:

• Progress notes
• Referral letters
• Insurance claims
• Intake assessments
• Treatment reports
• Patient instructions

Then, all that’s left is for the physician to review the note and add it to the EHR.

Heidi is compatible with desktop computers, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones. It works seamlessly with both in-person and telehealth sessions.

Because Heidi is compliant with region-specific privacy and data security regulations across the globe, it can be used in all practice settings internationally. 

Challenges Pre-Implementation

Before Heidi, the team at Priority Physicians faced three key administration-related challenges:

1. Balancing administration tasks with clinical time. ‍

“There was a cohort of us who would just always be here an hour or so after work, trying to finish up notes,” explains Dr. Fraser.

“The other thing that would happen is people would cut short a patient encounter, so they would have enough time to write their note before the next patient,” she adds.

Neither of these scenarios is sustainable.

Regularly staying late at work puts clinicians at risk of fatigue and burnout. And, trying to squeeze in notes between sessions creates a rushed and pressured style of practice that isn’t ideal for the physician or patient.

2. Staying fully engaged with patients during appointments.

The second pre-Heidi challenge Dr. Fraser identified was remaining fully engaged and connected with the patient during each appointment.

Traditional note-taking methods require the clinician to either hand-write or type notes during appointments. 

Seasoned practitioners develop a knack for doing this while maintaining eye contact. However, there’s no denying that the burden of recording a session in real-time can negatively impact connection and presence between the physician and patient.

3. Delays in getting information to clinical support staff.

Like most primary care practices, Priority Physicians utilize several allied health and clinical support staff.

These assistants support patients in completing follow-up actions requested by the doctor, such as arranging additional testing and subspeciality appointments. They also help with coordinating care, handling tasks like medication refills, prior authorizations, and scheduling appointments.  

“Before Heidi, our assistants often had to wait until the following day to get their task list, because most of us didn’t finish notes until 5:30pm,” states Dr. Fraser.

While urgent tasks would obviously be passed on right away, this delay in the workflow placed undue pressure on both physicians and assistants.

Problems before Heidi:

• Excessive documentation time
• Admin tasks reduced face-to-face interaction and eye contact with patient
• Physicians often stayed behind for an hour every day to write up notes
• Visits were occasionally shorten to make time for note-taking between sessions

Key Outcomes

In just 14 weeks since implementation, Heidi enabled the 12 physicians across the two Priority Physicians clinics to:

• Reduce charting time by 70%
• Save 6,440 minutes (100 hours) on documentation
• Recoup $16,000 in clinical time 
• Achieve a 600% ROI on implementation costs  

‍

Clinician Feedback

While the stats are impressive, the feedback from individual clinicians at Priority painted a vivid picture of the positive changes since Heidi.

Dr. Fraser herself stated, 

“Previously, I would spend 2-2.5 hours writing notes for a full day of seeing patients. Now with Heidi, I’ve got that down to around 40 minutes.”

“It’s not even just the time,” reveals Dr. Fraser. “Heidi has removed the psychological burden of having to always write notes.”

A new reality for being “on call”

“One thing Heidi has completely revolutionized is being on call,” Dr. Fraser states. “Especially on the weekends.”

During our interview, Dr. Fraser recounted how, “On Saturday mornings you get back-to-back phone calls. While you’re answering one call, another call comes through.” 

“Heidi has made being on call not as burdensome,” she exclaims. 

“You can just be done with one patient, Heidi will generate the note, and then you move on to the next.” 

Increased presence during appointments

Laughing, Dr. Fraser states that the main reason she reminds patients she’s using Heidi is because “otherwise, they’ll wonder how I’m going to remember what we talk about without writing stuff down!”

“It allows me just to talk to them. I’m not trying to type the whole time. We are just listening and communicating and really being present—and patients and family members love it.”

As a concierge medicine practice, Dr. Fraser explains that personal and attentive medicine is at the core of Priority Physicians’ model of care. 

While Heidi is primarily an administrative tool, the added presence it allows physicians to give their patients has also contributed positively to clinical care and patient satisfaction.

Patient Experience

Discussing patient perspectives about Heidi, Dr. Fraser states, “Patients think it’s really slick and it fits with our brand as a cutting-edge practice.”

She recounts that patients are always impressed when immediately after an appointment she hands them a printed treatment plan and instructions that have been generated by Heidi. 

There is also an option for clinicians to email a treatment plan to patients. Plus, Heidi can translate instructions into dozens of different languages.

Same-day response from clinical assistants

Because charting is now primarily done after each patient encounter, clinical assistants at Priority Physicians can immediately follow up on doctors’ requests.

This provides a more responsive and efficient overall experience for patients. It also alleviates stress on both physicians and assistants, as there is no back and forth or uncertainty around when follow-up tasks will be completed.

Future Plans

Considering their results from the first 14 weeks, Dr. Fraser is excited about avenues for Heidi to further enhance clinical practice and work-life balance for the team at Priority Physicians.

Just some of the plans for the future include:

• Utilizing single-patient team collaboration. Dr. Fraser mentioned that she had considered sharing her login with her assistant to make workflows more efficient. Fortunately, with single-patient team collaboration, this isn’t necessary. Team members can now use their own Heidi account to securely add entries to an existing physician’s note.
• Expanding the use of templates. During the interview, Dr. Fraser said annual comprehensive physical exams are the one area they haven’t yet been able to fully utilize Heidi. This is because while Heidi creates a handy transcript of the appointment, data still must be manually transferred to the EHR. In the coming weeks, the team plans to experiment with custom templates to identify opportunities to minimize the double handling of data.     
• Enjoy their newfound “spare” time. Priority Physicians have a firm commitment to keeping their per-physician patient caps as low as possible. Therefore, Dr. Fraser indicated that she and her colleagues plan to use the time liberated by Heidi to improve work-life balance. Just some of what Heidi has made possible are taking a break to eat lunch and go for a walk outside, catching up on phone calls between patient appointments, and most importantly—getting home on time.

Heidi: Human-Centered AI

At Heidi, our mission is to create products that utilize artificial intelligence to improve the daily life experience of all human beings.

Healthcare offers immense opportunities to achieve this goal. 

If clinicians are supported to do their job more efficiently, it’s possible to both improve physician well-being and enhance healthcare experiences for everyone.

This case study of implementing Heidi at Priority Physicians demonstrates how alleviating administrative burden enabled staff to regain a healthier work-life balance. It also enhanced an innovative model of patient-centric care. Which, as the capabilities of tools like Heidi increase, could be made available to an increasing number of consumers. 

Finally, because the doctors at Priority Physicians no longer need to write notes while delivering care, both patients and physicians regain the human element of medical care that has been eroded by ever-increasing administrative requirements.

Heidi is free to try for all clinicians. 

To enquire about clinic-level packages, please contact our sales team today.