Main image courtesy of Hawaii Pacific Health.

‍

AI medical scribes are starting to appear in all kinds of specialities, including in physical therapy. While you may have thought this type of tool is only useful for fields such as family practice, orthopedics, neurology, or pediatrics, the reality is that it is making its mark in physical and occupational therapy as well. Clinicians of all healthcare fields are dealing with burnout, and according to the CDC, as many as 46% of healthcare staff report feeling burned out often or very often. Those numbers are alarming, as it can have a very real impact on the quality of care patients receive as a result. 

‍

That’s why providers in a variety of fields are turning to AI to help alleviate a lot of the administrative tasks that take up too much time, as well as improve upon office processes for greater efficiency. 

‍

• This article will cover:
  
  • Whether or not AI scribes are helpful to physical therapists
  • The benefits of including AI scribes for PT practices
  • The top AI scribe for physical therapy notes

‍

Can physical therapists have AI scribes?

Is it possible for this healthcare specialty to even use an AI scribe?

AI scribes are applications that harness the power of natural language processing and machine learning to transcribe and summarize patient encounters. They have been very useful to a variety of practitioners, most stating that they find it saves them minutes for each patient, which can add up to saving hours of their time each day. Providers are tasked with not only attending to patients and caring for their clinical needs, but they also need to ensure that proper medical documentation is taking place. Typically this appears in the form of some kind of note (whether it’s a SOAP, DAT, or DART, etc.) that updates the patient's information and documents the current issue. These types of administrative tasks are essential to maintaining an accurate EHR, but they can be time consuming and prone to mistakes.

Additional tasks like proper coding on the patient’s note ensures that the correct information is included for billing purposes and also needs to be taken care of by the provider. It is easy to include the wrong code or miss a code that can potentially delay the revenue cycle and limit the capacity of the healthcare facility. 

…most scribe-using physicians spent one less hour a day on the computer. -Dr. Lee, author of the NEJM Catalyst study

AI wants to take these clerical tasks out of the hands of clinicians so that they can concentrate more on offering the best care possible for patients. One of the best ways to do that is with an ambient medical scribe that can take the conversation between patient and doctor and format it into a note, ensuring providers spend less time at the keyboard. But how can these types of applications be useful for physical therapists?

Evaluation details

When you speak with a new patient (or a returning one) as a physical therapist, one of the first things you need to do is conduct an evaluation. You need to determine what the problem is and get the details of the issue from the patient. Turning on an AI scribe at this point can be very beneficial, as it will start to summarize and transcribe what the patient is saying into the format of a note. Physical therapists will find this helpful because the application will catch details that they might not have caught as they were busy listening and creating a note at the same time.

Divided attention between the patient and the note is something that affects physicians and providers of all specialities, and can distract them from truly being present for patients. If a physical therapist is listening to the patient’s concerns and creating a note at the same time, they might miss details or additional information that could be helpful to include on the note. Because the AI scribe picks up the entire encounter, there’s a greater chance that something will not be left out.  

Assessment and plan of care

Having all the information in the note is a great starting point to begin the assessment and create a treatment plan. When the physical therapist sees the patient, they can pull up all the previous medical notes from other encounters to assess what has been working, and whether or not tweaks might need to be made to the treatment. This is very helpful because it gives the PT all the information up front, instead of relying on what they may (or may not) thought they had included in a previous note. 

The physical therapist can then make an assessment to see if different treatments may give better results. 

Dictation feature

In addition to capturing the information discussed during patient encounters, AI scribes make it easy to find information and add additional items to patient notes. The dictation feature could be very helpful to those providers who want to make addendums to previous notes, or are looking for specific information that is in the patient’s EHR. Lots of ambient medical scribes also respond to voice commands, so the practitioner just needs to ask the AI what they’re looking for and it will bring back results. This is helpful for finding specific forms, letters, or templates as well. 

What are the benefits of including a PT focused AI scribe?

There are lots of advantages for physical therapists to include an AI scribe in their practice

At first it may not have seemed possible to include an AI scribe in a specialty like physical therapy that requires providers to physically assist a lot of their patients. However, this field still requires a variety of administrative tasks to be accurately completed that can be streamlined with an AI assistant. The major benefits of including an AI scribe include: 

• More detailed notes. As soon as the evaluation starts, you can turn on the ambient medical scribe and it will start to listen. It will transcribe the exchange as the encounter progresses, including only the pertinent medical information. But since the physical therapist isn’t concerned with creating the note manually, they can listen to the patient and really hear what’s going on. When the provider’s attention is divided between these two tasks, sometimes the accuracy of the note can be compromised. 

Relying on the AI scribe is a better solution that ensures you’re going to have more detailed notes that include information you may have missed. Using an AI medical scribe ensures more information is retained in the note, making it incredibly useful and more complete than it might otherwise have been.

• An organized note. Not only does an AI scribe create a more detailed note, but it also provides physical therapists with more organized notes. This is thanks to how it automatically can place information into the correct format, and structure the note with information exactly where it’s supposed to be. Since it’s more detailed, there’s likely more information filled out, providing an easy to use note that can be uploaded to the EHR and synced across the system. 

Organized notes are more likely to have accurate billing codes attached to them as well, ensuring the revenue cycle moves along seamlessly and with less roadblocks.

• Improved information collection. There’s always room for improving processes in a PT practice, and an AI scribe can definitely benefit the information collection process. Creating notes from scratch can be time consuming and there’s a higher chance for human error or leaving important details out. When it’s done automatically with a medical scribe, that means that once the note is complete, it is immediately synced up so that everyone on the healthcare team has access to the updated medical information. If you’re working in a facility with multiple team members, this ensures everyone’s notes are the same, and collects all the important information.

• Easy to use templates. Templates are easy to incorporate with AI scribes, and they can really save time. Physical therapists might make templates for specific conditions such as knee replacements, shoulder surgery, or foot issues. That way if there is additional information that should be collected with specific conditions, it’s very simple to do.

• Integrated with EHRs. AI scribes are designed to integrate with EHR systems so that the whole patient journey is streamlined and automated. This ensures that reminders are sent for appointments, follow up requests are accessed, prescriptions and authorizations can be reviewed, and check in and check out is even easier.

The best AI scribe for physical therapy notes

Which ambient medical scribe should you use for PT notes?

If you think that an AI scribe could help alleviate some of the administrative burden of your PT office, you should know that there are all types out there that you can try out. You may want to figure out what you want assistance with in the first place (better notes, less computer time, more accurate billing), as that can help narrow down your choice. Then try out a few scribes to see how they work, and get a feel for using them with patients. Remember, these applications should make your daily routine easier, they shouldn’t make it more complicated to get your actual work done. 

Here are a few top notch AI scribes for physical therapy notes.

• Playback Health
  
  • This is a great option if you’re looking for an AI scribe that can do it all in a very user-friendly format. The AI ambient listening has a 99% transcription accuracy, so you can rest assured that your notes are getting all the important details that you might have missed during an evaluation or assessment. Because providers don’t need to worry about conducting encounters and typing notes at the same time, they saw a 20% increase in productivity, which can save hours per day.

• The application syncs with EHRs, so it’s a seamless process to automate the patient journey.

• Playback Health offers two tiers of service, and has a free two week trial.

• It is competitively priced at $99/month and offers a customized group plan.

• This AI scribe is HIPAA compliant and SOC 2 compliant. 

• ScribePT
  
  • This ambient medical scribe was designed specifically for PTs, OTs, and SLPs and it can reduce your documentation time up to 95%. Their easy to use application can create a draft of a note immediately after the evaluation, where it can be reviewed and then synced with the patient’s EHR. This not only saves hours each day for users, but it ensures everyone’s notes are complete, accurate, and detailed.

• They offer a 30 free trial.

• Cost is $99/therapist per month.

• Easily integrated with the existing EHR.

• HippoScribe
  
  • HippoScribe wants to give clinicians like physical therapists part of their day back, and avoid spending so much time typing up notes. You can customize your templates based on your specialty, and expect to get a note in real time, just 30 seconds after the evaluation ends. This AI scribe can be directly integrated with your EHR, and is very user friendly.

• There is a free tier with five visits per week, a pro level that’s $99/month, as well as a customized group plan.

• Is HIPAA compliant.

• Can be used on a computer, tablet, or phone.

• Offers customized templates.

Which AI scribe will you use for your physical therapy practice?

There are a lot of benefits to including an AI scribe in your physical therapy practice, but how can you be sure which one to pick? One of the best ways to get better acquainted with them is to research a few and give them a try. There are a lot of AI scribes that offer free trials or demos, that would give you a feel for how this tool would interact in your practice.

‍