The mind and body are interconnected. So are physical ailments and behavioral health. Many individuals have diagnosed conditions spanning both categories.
Depression could be causing a patient’s fatigue, for example. Or a back injury could be fueling substance abuse. Stress can cause stomach aches, and disease can cause stress.
So why can’t patient care be just as integrated as patient health?
We believe it can. In fact, this integration was exactly the foundational premise of Health Information Management Systems. It wasn’t just an afterthought. Prior to founding our company, I was CIO of an integrated health care organization. And I saw how difficult it was for clinicians on the primary care and behavioral health sides of the house to coordinate care for chronically ill individuals receiving both kinds of treatment.
Not only are integrated health care facilities architecturally bifurcated with physical health and behavioral health facilities on separate floors or wings; but the bifurcation carries over to the IT and health record levels.
Malpractice risk
This fragmentation creates problems for clinicians, the bottom line, and for patients whose care teams aren’t communicating as well as they should. When communication and care plans are not coordinated between providers, clinicians see patients knowing too little about the patient as an individual. Consequences can range from minor oversights and patient dissatisfaction to worst-case scenarios like misdiagnoses, adverse drug interactions, and substance abuse complications. Provider reimbursement issues are another challenge.
In 2014, I saw an opportunity to help – i.e., to close care gaps, enable new service lines, and optimize performance. In the years since, we have developed our AxiomEHR platform to provide:
- A “whole patient” view with patient snapshots that integrate diagnoses, meds, lab results, providers, appointments, and social determinants of health.
- Filtering by role to prioritize information for individual users as they need it.
- Mobile apps to bring essential EHR information and data capture to smartphones and tablets.
- Social-style architecture including email, IM, video conferencing, notifications, team threads, and telehealth.
- Voice recognition for capturing notes and commanding software hands free.
- Artificial intelligence to elicit insights like potential diagnoses or treatment from unstructured data.
- Patient self-service for appointments, refills, and education.
That was Axiom 1.0. We just doubled down on this intelligent automation and released a new version of the software, AxiomEHR, with AI-driven automation to streamline inefficient workflows within and across physical and behavioral health practices.
We have improved data visibility in a new, highly customizable interface which has saved clinicians two hours a day on average over other solutions in pilot tests.
The software also captures verbatim transcripts of patient visits, measuring patient sentiment, creating draft service plans, and integrating histories. The system trains on a provider’s own data and continuously learns from it. An AI-powered chatbot answers leaders’ naturally stated questions about any data in their organization. AxiomEHR brings similar intelligent automation to revenue cycle management, tackling under-coding, under-documentation, and physical/behavioral blind spots. It’s easily configured to support value-based care.
An integrated medical practice is multifaceted, just like a patient. Your technology should support this reality. It’s the right way to produce the best outcomes possible for everyone.
