Tom Herzog, chief operating officer of Netsmart, says that “digitization has always been about entering data into the system” and that users are asking, “What does the system do for me?”  It’s time to “aggregate” that data and get a million “second opinions.”

Matthew Arnheiter, senior vice president of innovations, described Netsmart’s project with the Missouri Behavioral Health Council (MBHC) to use predictive analytics and identify people at risk of suicide. Their AI system ingested data across the “silos” of more than 30 behavioral health providers and other sources, such as death certificates of those who took their own lives. Using this data, clinicians could establish connections with individuals in the ER and make sure they had a primary care provider upon discharge. The results were not only fewer ER visits, but more access to care.

Their Bells documentation assistant allows progress notes to be completed within minutes, with quality checks such as interacting with the clinicians in real time to make sure they enter statements that back up the diagnosis and choice of action. According to Herzog, the system not only identifies patients at risk for various conditions, but searches for effective interventions to solve the problem. He calls this “social determinants of care.”

Arnheiter says that in the near future, the clinician’s interaction with the EHR will be very different: Instead of having to spend enormous amounts of time entering information, it will be extracted from conversations and entered automatically. He also looks forward to aggregating data into a national database for even better risk analysis.

Watch the video for more insights about the use of AI to intervene in patient care.

Learn more about Netsmart: https://www.ntst.com/

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