How eClinicalWorks Is Reducing the Risk of Physician Burnout

Adam Siladi: Welcome to this edition of the eClinicalWorks Podcast. I’m Adam Siladi. In today’s episode we will focus on physician burnout. Physician burnout’s a major issue in the healthcare industry today, and a recent study by Stanford Medicine highlighted several opinions from providers that were interviewed on ways that EHRs could improve and help reduce the burden of physician burnout. In that study, 67% of respondents said interoperability was one area of deficiency and a place where they would like to see major improvements in the next few years. eClinicalWorks, of course, continues to innovate and advance the ability of interoperability even single day. And here to speak with me about that is Farah Saeed, who is a specialist here in the interoperability space at eClinicalWorks. Farah, thank you so much for being here today.

Farah Saeed: Thanks for having me, Adam.

Siladi: Farah, what are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to interoperability? When people talk about deficiencies in interoperability, what are they talking about?

Saeed: Yeah, so, one of the biggest problems in the industry today is really getting all the information that you need to treat your patients in one place, and making that access to the information as easy as possible. So, as most providers know, of course you can’t function in the bubble that is just your office. Your patients travel, they go to other locations, they see other physicians, other support services. And, really, getting all that information in one place is the goal that interoperability is trying to solve. And then to improve interoperability is just to make it as seamless and as easy as possible.

Siladi: So, if we were to break that down, it sounds like you are talking about accessing the right information. It sounds like we’re talking about organizing information, incorporating that information into the point of care, you know, into the workflow, into the patient’s record in an easy way. And also being able to find the right information, those are all things that people struggle with. Now, what are some solutions out there that are being proposed? I mean, I know that a lot of times these providers are hearing that ‘Hey, if you want this information, a big source of this is the hospital.’ That’s a place where they have been trying to get that information that has traditionally been difficult. And I think a lot of these providers are hearing that in order to get that information you have to join some sort of a hospital network. Is that the case, or are there other ways to access this kind of information?

Saeed: Yeah, and that’s absolutely true, Adam. A lot of our providers do come to us and say ‘We’ve been told that we need to switch EMR systems. We need to go on to the same system as the hospital.’ And that’s definitely not the case anymore in this day and age of interoperability. So, as eClinicalWorks, we have a number of solutions to help providers communicate more easily with these external systems, whether they’re hospitals or other providers out there. Some of the more common ones that I think our providers must probably know about — P2P, of course, which is our provider-to-provider network. That’s what’s going to help providers out there exchange referrals more easily. And of course, layered on top of our P2P network is Direct messaging. And that’s basically what opens up the network to everybody nationwide who might have a Direct address. Direct addresses, of course, being essentially the EMR-to-EMR email address, how providers can speak to each other. So, P2P and Direct exist out there today. Also, we have eEHX. eEHX is eClinicalWorks’ Health Information Exchange solution. So, we have a number of communities that set up these kind of mini-servers to sit between their network of practices that are all affiliated with each other, to help them share data and communicate more effectively. Now, we’ve had these solutions, as well as a number of other interfaces, live interfaces, you know, practice management interfaces that exist for other systems out there. So, these all have been around for some time, but the problem, I guess, for a lot of practices are ones that aren’t part of an affiliated community, who are saying ‘OK, I might not necessarily need to join just this network. I’m an independent physician, I speak to a number of hospitals out there.’

So, to kind of solve this specific problem, there are two leading, nationwide initiatives that have come up, and they are CommonWell and Carequality. So, these are third-party groups that have come together. They are formed of a number of vendor systems. Each of them have their own group of vendors. eClinicalWorks is participating in both, and their purpose is to promote easier interoperability between all these different systems if you’re not necessarily belonging to one specific hospital network or community network.

Siladi: OK, so CommonWell and Carequality, information networks that help to share, you know, medical records, medical information back and forth between different points of care. Who are on these networks? Who’s using this information?

Saeed: So, there are a number of EMR systems out there that are participating in both. That’s really going to be the primary difference between the two, is which vendors are participating in which one. So, for Carequality the biggest inpatient systems out there are going to be Epic and NextGen. And in CommonWell the two biggest are going to be Cerner and Meditech. So those are really who is participating in both. I can tell you on our side we have over 2,500 practices already connected. In both of these organizations there are thousands of systems nationwide already connected and already sharing data.

Siladi: Now, I’d like to get some more info from you on some of the data that is flowing across those networks and some of the ways that that’s helping reduce physician burnout. But if a practice wanted to get involved with those networks today, what would they have to do? I know we are including those integrations at no extra cost as part of the eCW system. So, how would someone get on the CommonWell or Carequality network today?

Saeed: As you said, it is free of cost. And for most of our practices, it’s available for On-Demand Activation from within their EMR. So, everybody on Version 11, and the clients who are on our later versions of Version 10, all you have to do is go into your admin band, go down to Product Activation, and there’s a section called the Interoperability Hub. And that’s where you will find both CommonWell and Carequality options. And you can just run it on your own. There’s no project, there’s no timeline associated with it. It goes through right from there. We do belong to both networks, so as a practice you can definitely participate with both networks, as well. So, in the On-Demand process it will ask you to only check one, so you just have to do it one at a time. You can go through, activate the first one, and then go through and do it again for the second.

Siladi: OK, and there’s definitely no reason not to join both networks since we’re including it at no additional cost. Now Farah, I know these are national networks, I know that practices that are integrated with these networks are getting information sometimes from all over the country if their patients are on vacation or sometimes they spend part of the year in another location. But let’s start to talk about some of the information that goes back and forth on these networks. How is eCW’s integration with CommonWell and Carequality helping to reduce physician burnout?

Saeed: So, you know, Adam, as we mentioned at the beginning, one of the biggest problems within the interoperability sphere is getting all the data that you need easily. So, today, the way that works is providers are seeing a patient. Patients come in, they say ‘Oh yeah, last week I was at some hospital.’ ‘Which hospital were you at?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know, it was the one up the street.’ You know, they don’t always remember all the information, they don’t necessarily have the exact date and time. Doctor’s going to go up to their front desk, say ‘Hey, you know, we need this patient’s information. Can you call all the hospitals that are, maybe, down the street from us, or all the hospitals in the county. Because they don’t remember which one they went to.’ So, it’s a big process, and it can take time, and it takes a lot of effort to get all of that data in one place, sent over to their practice so the doctors can review it. So, with Carequality and CommonWell, as long as all the other organizations are participating, which is what our goal is here, all that needs to be done is, as long as the patient has chosen to participate, has given their consent to participate, when you mark your patient as ‘arrived,’ a query is going to go out into the network, it’s going to gather that data and deliver it straight into the EMR. So, the first thing we’re doing is we’re taking away that calling, that checking, that whole process. Everything is triggered on arrival. There are no additional clicks required for this. So, as we know, clicks are a big part of the EMR workflow, so that’s the first thing we did, is to eliminate that. It’s all fully triggered on the patient arrival. Then, to make the data easier to view when it comes into your system, we deliver it to the Right Chart Panel. So, providers don’t need to go looking for it, they don’t need to open any additional sections or windows or, you know, go away from the Note. The data’s going to be right there on the Progress Note on the Right Chart Panel, on a new tab titled eEHX.

Siladi: Now, Farah, is this going to make stuff like following up on tests and referrals easier, as well, or are we just talking about hospital information?

Saeed: It’s definitely going to make following up on information like tests easier. Referrals we’re still going to keep in that Direct workflow, just because the way the data is queried. You can certainly use this for that, as well, but it’s just not as timely as you might get with referrals. The reason for that being is that data’s queried when patients arrive, so it’s all for the purposes of treatment. When the patients are presenting, that’s when we pull the data and display it for you to view so it’s available at that time.

Siladi: So, Farah, with all this information flowing back and forth between these settings, I mean, there’s a lot of data to sift through. How is eClinicalWorks making it easier to find the information that’s relevant for my patient today, as opposed to stuff that may have been done a long time ago but is still in the patient’s record?

Saeed: Yeah, so we have two ways to help out with that. So, the first is the data that actually shows up on the Right Chart Panel itself. So on that panel, we have the Problem List, the allergies and the medications, and all three of these sections are available for discrete import. So that, again, is going to help with your documentation for today’s Note. Patient was maybe in the hospital last week, they added a medication into their regime. It’s going to show up on the Right Chart Panel, and just like all the other tabs that you might already be familiar with on the panel, there’s a little blue arrow, and clicking on that blue arrow will let you bring it into your Note without having to retype it to go into meds, search for it by name, search for the dosage. You know, you can just one click, pull it over into your Progress Note. So again, the sections were Problem List, allergies, and medications. In addition to that, from that Right Chart Panel itself, you can click a tab, and it will pop open a window where you can view the full CCDA document. Now, like you mentioned, there might be months and months of data that’s located on this screen. To help providers out, what we have is a couple filters on that screen so they can filter by source, which is the name of the hospital, the name of the practice, you know, wherever that data might be coming from as well as date filters. So, if the patient says, ‘I was in the hospital last week,’ you can change those date filters to just one week ago, and it will only filter down to the data that’s come in for that time range.

Siladi: That sounds like a big improvement because I know sometimes when we’re getting all those faxes through the fax server, those things are being attached to the patient, they’re being named, usually with the date first and things like that. So now they’re all, you know, listed here, and it can be tough to sift through those things. So it’s great to hear that there are some filters there. Now, another important question, of course, is what is the source for this information? You know, some of the data that we’re getting from our payers, from other organizations that were affiliated with — that can sometimes be based on claims data, or it’s old by the time it gets to us because there’s a lot of processing involved. How quickly does this information turn around and what is the data source there that’s allowing for that?

Saeed: Yeah, so the data is all going to be clinical — all the data that’s exchanged through Carequality and CommonWell. So, what basically happens is when a provider is documenting in whatever system they might have, whether it’s a Note or however they might refer to it, as soon as they lock that Note or consider it done — of course, we know in our system, we call it locking, other hospital systems may have other terminology for it — but as soon as that Note is closed out in that system, it’s available for exchange on the network. So, as long as the providers are locking soon after the actual visit, it could be available instantaneously. So there’s no waiting, there’s no waiting on processing. As soon as that provider locks out that Note, if a query goes out five minutes later, patient’s located in another office, another hospital, they’ll be able to pull in that data immediately.

Siladi: Great! So, that information will be available almost as quickly as it is completed there. Now, eClinicalWorks, of course, continues to innovate in this space. And one of the things that we announced at that this year’s National Conference was Prizma, which is the industry’s first health information search engine. What is Prizma going to do to further enhance what we’re able to do with interoperability today?

Saeed: Now, let me tell you, Adam, we’re really excited about Prizma as well, so hopefully that will carry over to the providers. So, what Prizma is doing is just making it even easier to view and translate and access this information for providers. So, it will be embedded within the Progress Note. There will be a link to open up Prizma, and Prizma’s going to gather all of this information that’s coming in from Carequality, from CommonWell, from any other external sources that you might have interfaced into your system. And it’s going to present it in a beautiful timeline view so you’ll be able to see hospital admissions, any testing that was done. And the greatest part about it is it’s going to be searchable. So, just like we mentioned before this issue of sifting through the data, we already have filters to make that a little easier. But this is going to take us to the next level. We’ll be able to search for words within those Notes. So, you’ll be able to search for x-rays specifically, or certain lab work specifically. It’s going to make searching and getting that data immediately at the tip of your fingers even easier.

Siladi: Excellent. Well, we’re very excited to see what comes out there with Prizma, and hopefully, that will be released soon. Thank you so much, Farah, for your time here today. For the eClinicalWorks Podcast, I’m Adam Siladi. And if you’d like to see any of our other episodes, you can check them out on iTunes, YouTube, or my.eclinicalworks.com. And, of course, if you’d like any more information about the things that we discussed here today, check out my.eclinicalworks.com, or speak with your Strategic Account Manager. I’m Adam Siladi, and thanks for watching.

Adam Siladi: Welcome to the eClinicalWorks Podcast. I’m Adam Siladi. Today’s episode is part of our special series focusing on physician burnout. Physician burnout is one of the major issues that we’re addressing here in the industry today. And eClinicalWorks is always trying to improve the physician experience and reduce the burden of the physician’s documentation so that we can try to combat that physician burnout. Here to speak with me about that today is Rory Glowik from eClinicalWorks. Rory, thank you so much for being here today.

Rory Glowik: Thank you, Adam.

Siladi: And we’re going to be discussing how eClinicalWorks Scribe is one of those tools that eCWs has to help fight that physician burnout. Now Rory, you are part of our Enterprise Strategy team here at eClinicalWorks. So, tell us a little bit about what your focus is and why you know so much about Scribe.

Glowik: Sure. Thank you, Adam. Well, on the Enterprise Strategy team here at eClinicalWorks we work with clients of all sizes. And I’ve been working over the past four or five years with Scribe in particular for dictation. Now, we’ve seen where documentation has come from a paper form into dictation and to the EHR, but now we see providers wanted to shift towards dictation again. And so, I think that’s why I want to kind of focus on eClinicalWorks Scribe today to help offer a solution for this physician burnout that you reference.

Siladi: So, before we get to some of those more technical details, let’s talk a little bit about the context. A study recently came out from Stanford Medicine focusing on EHR experience and what providers would like to see in terms of improvements there. What are some of those things that we learned from that study? Where are these areas of burnout most being affected? And what do we know about that situation?

Glowik: Absolutely, no, very good. So, the Stanford study on physician burnout was entirely geared towards EHRs, and it focused on — in the average, let’s say, 31-minute appointment with a patient — that a provider is spending over 50% of the time, whether in the room or out of the room, documenting in their EHR. So, we need to find a faster method for these providers to document their visits. A couple of the other, I’d say, issues that they’ve run into is whether it’s, you know, too many clicks, less face time with their patients, and they find that they’re just typing, looking down at their laptops. And also this all plays into a good work/life balance. So, that is the problem. Now, how do we offer a solution?

Siladi: Right. Definitely, if we’re focusing a lot of our time on that EHR interaction, while it’s important to be able to get that information in there in a reportable way that allows us to get the value out of recording that information, a lot of those things suffer, right? I mean, we know we hear stories about physicians staying late at the office, trying to close those Notes before the end of the day, before they get home. And there’s maybe not enough time for some of those other things that are so important. So, Rory, eClinicalWorks Scribe, right, this is something that helps to speed up the documentation of the provider’s Note. And like you said, the main focus is to be able to allow providers to dictate to the Scribe tool, and allow that to translate into their Note. This is, you know, something that I think may be counter to some of the trends that we’ve seen up until now. Because I know focusing on EHR adoption, dictation was something we were encouraging providers to get away from —

Glowik: Right.

Siladi: That spoken data that was —

Glowik: Unstructured.

Siladi: So, what is this evolution here? How are we coming around full circle to where we started on this?

Glowik: Absolutely. So, I think what you reference to is — we find ourselves as an EHR company, but for physicians, they find themselves in a world of I need to document my visit, but I also need to make it reportable. And you definitely reference how we tried to steer folks away from just the free Dictaphone dictation with a transcriptionist. So, the way eClinicalWorks Scribe works is that a provider can use basically speech-to-text recognition. They can speak into — whether it’s their laptop, whether it’s their iPad®, or even their smartphone — to capture that information. This could be everywhere from the HPI through the review of systems, their examination, selecting a diagnosis, placing orders, specifying billing codes, and even locking the Note all in a single dictation flow inside of eClinicalWorks. We are seeing that providers need to basically expedite their patient visits. Now, not just only get the documentation into eClinicalWorks or the Electronic Health Record, but also to place some of that in a nice, formatted structure inside of their SOAP Note. In order to do that, we use the speech-to-text, basically, solutions.

Siladi: So, Rory, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what Scribe is exactly and what it’s supposed to do for our physicians.

Glowik: So, eClinicalWorks Scribe helps take speech-to-text solution when a provider dictates and helps structure it into the Progress Note. By doing so, a provider can have a nice formatted narrative of their patient’s visit, and they can capture that data very quickly, all the way from the HPI through the billing codes.

Siladi: So, we’re taking speech-to-text and we’re translating that into the documentation that the provider needs to worry about. But, if I understand you correctly, we’re really encouraging more dictation, which is something that, you know, with the EHR adoption, we were trying really to move some providers away from that, because it wasn’t reportable, it was, you know, we need to make sure we can get that information out. Why are we coming full circle again to dictation?

Glowik: No, it definitely seems cyclical going from dictation to an EHR, back to dictation within an EHR. So, I think some of the core reasons why we did this is that we saw that challenge of increased patient time spent with patients just for the sake of EHR documentation. So, with that challenge alone, with dictation, if I was an orthopedic provider or physician, I could dictate my note in under 90 seconds and get in and out of that room. So, I say speed is for one. The second is that Scribe does help structure some of that data. So, when we do talk about reporting, you can actually help structure it into the appropriate ROS and examination sections in your SOAP Note. So, we see the need to come back to this because there are — like we referred to before — actual case studies about how providers are interacting with EHRs, and I think dictation within eClinicalWorks Scribe could really be a solution.

Siladi: So, besides helping to format this information in the Progress Note, you know, we know there’s a lot of other structured pieces of information that we need to get into that Note — diagnoses, you know, medications, things like that. What else is Scribe able to do? How can it help us to also resolve those issues?

Glowik: So, a few different examples would be the ability to actually select the diagnosis code by using what’s known as a Scribe command. So, I can say “chest pain,” and I use the command of “show list.” It will actually pull open a full list of the ICD-10 codes correlating to that diagnosis. I can then select the appropriate diagnosis and move on to the treatment section where I can, say, order CBC. I can place orders. I can even enter treatment notes and move all the way down to the billing codes, add E&M code 99213 or 214. So, those specific commands are actually built intrinsically within Scribe, and they can be used in conjunction with any of the macros or commands from your speech-to-text vendors, and there are many that we work with today.

Siladi: Now, when you say they’re intrinsic, does that mean this works out of the box, or are there some configurations that I have to do?

Glowik: This actually works out of the box. The only configuration has to do with training. So, it’s having your resources, understand what those commands are, how to use them through their dictations — and at first, there will be a learning curve. But as myself, I’ve been using it for about four years, four-and-a-half years at this point. I can very seamlessly transcribe a Note from start to finish and even lock and send that Progress Note back to the PCP, all with eCW Scribe.

Siladi: Well, especially if it’s able to help us select things like diagnosis codes and order labs and even pick those billing codes, I think it can really save a lot of time. I mean, that’s where, you know, you don’t want to be paging through those lists and trying to find the right specific code. That can really help you out there. So, Rory, what are some of the outcomes that you’ve seen at practices that have adopted Scribe?

Glowik: So, some of the outcomes that I’ve seen have actually had to do with clinical efficiency. So, with that being said, basically saving time per patient with documentation, so a provider — and there are many different ways you can do this — you could use eClinicalWorks Scribe inside of the room with the patient, dictating in front of them. You could also step out of the room, dictate back at your desk or your workstation, and move seamlessly from room to room. So you’re seeing reduced patient times when it comes to the provider piece. You’re also seeing the ability for a provider to get the orders in faster so that the nursing or MA or clinical staff can go and basically collect the specimens, or move forward with that patient’s visit. All of this results in greater time throughout the day, and with that additional time a provider can either see more patients, or they can go and they can expand, let’s say, their practice within their organization.

Siladi: Right, or maybe even spend more time with some of those existing patients. Now, another thing that I know is that, you know, we just came out with a case study on Scribe with one of our clients, Gastro Health.

Glowik: Yes.

Siladi: Is using this. And one of the points that I picked up from that was there are some doctors who actually have lives outside of work, right? And this is —

Glowik: Shocking!

Siladi: Shocking! And one doctor in particular said that he was actually able to make sure that he gets that time in for some of those outside activities. I think he has some hobbies and things like that that he can dedicate time to now that he’s not staying late documenting Notes. So, it does sound like there’s really a huge impact here. Where can clients go if they would like to learn more about how to use Scribe? How do they get in touch with someone like you?

Glowik: Perfect. So, I would say the first level is always to go to the support portal for eClinicalWorks. We have extensive documentation, with videos showing Scribe. And also tips and tricks inside of there. We also have eCW University that can show a provider or even another clinical staff member how to navigate utilizing Scribe. But even if we want to go further, we can contact eClinicalWorks through your support account manager, and we can actually connect with you, and speak to your providers, and show them the ins and outs of Scribe.

Siladi: Absolutely. And my.eclinicalworks is also where our clients can see our other podcast episodes. You can also check those out on YouTube, iTunes and, of course, we mentioned my.eclinicalworks.com. As Rory said, speak with your Strategic Account Manager if you have any questions about any of the things that we’ve discussed today and we’ll see you on the next eClinicalWorks Podcast. Thank you for watching!

Adam Siladi: Physician burnout is a major issue that we’re dealing with in the healthcare industry today, and eClinicalWorks is constantly looking for ways to improve the usability of our tools and our capabilities to help providers do what they do best — care for patients. On this episode of the eClinicalWorks Podcast, we’ll be looking at ways in which the eClinicalWorks Virtual Assistant, Eva, and the enhancements that we’re calling Eva 2.0 help streamline documentation and combat physician burnout. I’m Adam Siladi, and joining me today is Brian Hughes from the Business Development Team. Brian, thanks for being here.

Brian Hughes: Thanks for having me, Adam.

Siladi: So, there was a study that came out not too long ago from Stanford Medicine talking about physicians’ reaction to their EMR. What were some of the things that we learned from that study?

Hughes: So, what we learned was three major takeaways from that study. The first one that was highlighted was that physicians understood the value of the EHR. However, they feel there could be substantial improvement to them, specifically around usability and things like that. The second one was a high percentage of physicians didn’t view the EHR as a powerful clinical tool to help them with their day-to-day operations and decision-making. And the third one was they had short-term and long-term goals that they would like to see from the EHR vendors, you know, specifically around interoperability, user interface, and also synthesizing information in one source.

Siladi: And, of course, eClinicalWorks is working to improve on all of those areas. That’s specifically why we are here today. Because, I think a lot of those capabilities that you’re mentioning — a lot of things on that wish list there — are actually built into Eva, which is, of course, the industry’s first virtual assistant. Now, Eva is available right now, today, in Version 11. There’s no additional cost to use it, and we actually did an eClinicalWorks Podcast on Eva with Brian Saal not too long ago. So, you can check that out for an introduction to Eva. But today, we’re talking about Eva 2.0, because at our National Conference, like we always do, we rolled out some new features, some enhancements, that we’re calling Eva 2.0. So, Brian, what are some of those things that we are looking to talk about with enhancements to Eva?

Hughes: So, like you said, Eva stands for eClinicalWorks Virtual Assistant, and the major word to pull out of there is assistant. And just like any new assistant, you need to understand, you know, what that assistant can do for you, and establishing that strong working relationship. So, the assistant is there to gather, present, and display information to you for tasks that you might have done by yourself. So, with Eva, what that does is it allow you to collect that information, and presents that information to you as a provider so that you can make better decisions, you know, in the space that you’re at. So, one example where Eva can help, is potentially, you’re handling a medication refill, for example. And you’re looking at the medication, and you want to understand how many refills were done on that patient. What Eva can do is, you can ask Eva, what’s the medication refill history on this particular medication, and it can show you the timeline of that medication, when it was refilled, when it was stopped, so that you can make a decision if you want to send that medication, e- prescribe, or you want to hold onto it and have some more review on it.

Siladi: Sounds like a very useful functionality. You do a lot of refills during the day, that can be a time-consuming activity, so having some help with that, I think, can alleviate a lot of that time constraint there. Now, Eva is a virtual assistant, and like all of the virtual assistants that are out there today, the ones that we know best, we interact with them in different ways. We can type commands to Eva, we can speak commands to Eva, but I think there have been some enhancements to the ways that you can interact with Eva with this latest enhancement. What can you tell us about that?

Hughes: Absolutely. So, we made significant improvements to Eva 2.0, one of which that comes to mind is we’ve embedded our Scribe technology into the virtual assistant. And this is very impactful for a number of different ways, because now what you can do is you can dictate a Note using our eCW speech technology directly into Scribe through the virtual assistant. So, at any point during your navigation of the software, you can pull up Eva and actually do a dictation on a Progress Note for the patient right from there using Scribe. So, I kind of relate it into the context where, you know, providers used to pick up the phone, make a phone call over the phone to their dictation service, and then hang up. So, rather than using that phone, you can leverage Eva with Scribe and you’d be able to dictate directly into there, you know, at no cost, and, you know, it saves a lot of time.

Siladi: So, what you’re saying is I used to have to pull up a Progress Note to be able to do any documentation, or I might have to work with a transcription service to get those things in there. Now, without leaving my EMR, or maybe even leaving the screen that I am on, I can pull up Eva and have it do that kind of documentation for me?

Hughes: Correct. So, you don’t have to individually go into each Progress Note and do your documentation. You can leverage Eva to do that, so whatever screen you’re on, you can make the dictation on that most recent Progress Note.

Siladi: So, we also actually spoke with Dawn Murphy recently, who is also on the Business Development team, about ways in which Eva is actually working to enhance the patient/provider relationship as well. We’d like to show you a clip from that conversation now.

Dawn Murphy: Let’s say that the provider’s in a lab. They’ve reviewed the lab, they then need to contact the patient. Eva can help with a number of different modalities in contacting the patient. We call this hello2healow. So, it allows the provider and clinical staff to choose an option in how they’re going to contact the patient after the lab was reviewed. Let’s say the lab is normal, and they choose to send a voice message to the patient. They can choose a template, and the voice message would go over to the patient saying that their lab was normal. If they have any questions, to contact the office. They get it done right there. So with hello2healow being able to call the patient immediately right from their desktop, right from their laptop, actually, and not only do the voice call with the patient, but maybe even do a video called just to say ‘Hey, I wanted to see how you’re doing.’ Just very quickly on the patient side, they get this in their healow app, and hello2healow really comes up just like another call on their phone. What’s nice about that — I’m just going to add a little personal note here. I do use healow, and my whole family uses healow because all of our providers are on eClinicalWorks. So, I already have this feeling of having close contact with my providers with healow. I basically have my providers in my back pocket. But to also have this next step of a provider being able to call me on my phone through the healow app. I mean, that is really solidifying that relationship with the provider. It boosts my loyalty. And that’s what I want. I want convenience for me and my family. So I monitor my family, my family’s wellness on the healow app, as well. And I’m a busy person. I travel a lot for my job. So, to have that connection with the practice, that they can call me, or video call me, and they’re more comfortable with it, and the convenience of them calling me right on my cellphone through that app is a huge win from for me as a patient, but also the provider and clinical staff, as well.

Siladi: And thanks very much to Dawn for her insights on how that affects patients and herself, being a patient that uses eClinicalWorks and healow. So, Brian, there are a couple of follow-up questions that we have following that conversation. hello2healow sounds like a great feature, but how is this call initiated?

Hughes: So, what you can do is you can leverage Eva, the virtual assistant. You could say contact a particular patient, and it will give you a number of different modalities in terms of how you can contact that patient. Whether you want to make a voice-over template to send to them, so it maybe it falls into their voice mailbox, or you can do an audio call to them, or a face-to-face virtual call with them, depending on your choice. And when you initiate those calls, it will go right through Eva to the patient’s healow app. So, they would get a notification that their physician is contacting them. And then you can have that communication, and this is vital and important because there might be an example where you receive a lab result and you want to, before you publish it to the Patient Portal, you want to have that quick discussion with them, to kind of explain kind of what some of the attributes and results that came through, so they’re not too alarmed. You can leverage Eva, make that call, have that discussion with the patient, mark the lab as reviewed, and publish it to the Patient Portal so that the patient gets the results, they had the conversation with the provider, and they feel a little bit more comfortable. So, solidifying that loyalty with the provider, and that interaction, so you have that patient-to-provider interaction

Siladi: There’s a lot of choices there. We can send out a canned message, the template that you mentioned, we can talk to the patient over the phone, we can even do a video call. And I know at our Conference we spoke with Dr. Prasanthi Reddy, who told us how she was using the TeleVisits to really learn more about her patients. They were opening up a lot more, she learned a lot more about who they were outside the office. So, that’s a really great tool to be able to build that relationship. But one thing that comes to mind though, Brian, is if we’re using hello2healow, maybe the doctor is on their phone, for example, and they want to reach out and they want to call that patient, provider privacy is a big thing. You know, if the patients all of a sudden have their cellphone number, I mean they could call them at any time. What is hello2healow going to do, or what is Eva going to do through that hello2healow functionality, to help protect that information?

Hughes: So, when you make that call to the patients, you can mask the phone number, so you’re not giving out that provider’s personal cell number, because you don’t necessarily want the patient to be calling the provider’s personal number. So, when that call goes out, eClinicalWorks masks your phone number, and it can actually display the office number. So, if at any point they want to call back, they can call back to the office rather than your personal number, so you have that privacy for your physicians when they’re making those calls.

Siladi: Well, we’ve covered a lot of features here already with Eva 2.0, and of course eClinicalWorks in general is always growing, always expanding, so what is Eva going to be doing now to help providers keep up with all of those changes?

Hughes: It’s a great point. I know my days as a business analyst, I work with a lot of providers, and they might need additional training on the system. They might not understand what a particular button or feature does within eClinicalWorks. And also, they want to have some reference material at their fingertips — rather than having, maybe, a printed out sheet or a how-to guide, they can actually leverage Eva for educational materials. So, they’d be able to say a command like ‘Show me videos tagged for E Jellybean.’ And what that will do is actually display videos, or educational videos for the provider, that they can reference and watch. Or, if they don’t have time to watch a video, they can toggle to our FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions area, where eCW presents a list of frequently asked questions that we receive that the provider can reference to get more information on a particular feature within eClinicalWorks, such as what are the different refill statuses in the E Jellybean. So, that saves a lot of time from opening up tickets, maybe contacting your support team, or trying to find information through the support portal.

Siladi: True. And all those videos that you mentioned, they’re very short, I know they’re only just a minute or two long, but sometimes that’s even more time than you want to spend, or it’s easier to just scan through something. So, the addition of those FAQs in Eva 2.0 I think is really going to enhance that usability.

Hughes: It’s actually that assistant.

Siladi: And actually, Brian, aren’t they context-specific as well, those FAQs?

Hughes: Yes, so you can pull up different contexts, and it’ll be actually embedded right within Eva, so you can read it quickly and then move about with your day.

Siladi: Already, well, Brian, we always know that an extra set of helping hands is crucial, and having Eva 2.0 in eClinicalWorks as a no-additional-cost feature, that can really add a lot of value for our providers.

Hughes: Absolutely.

Siladi: If you’d like to learn anything else about the topics we covered here today, you can visit my.eclinicalworks.com, or speak with your Strategic Account Manager. And please do check out our other eClinicalWorks Podcasts episodes on iTunes, YouTube, and my.eclinicalworks.com. For the eClinicalWorks Podcast, I’m Adam Siladi, thanks for watching.