INTRODUCTION
Dr. Pinkal Patel is the owning practitioner of Oviedo Family Health Center, a family medicine practice located just outside of Ovideo, Florida. His passion for family medicine is due in large part to his experience growing up in a small town where he, his parents, and his siblings attended the same small practice for all their healthcare needs.
The doctor who administered his immunizations as a child was the same doctor who took care of his sports physicals in high school and who saw him off to college with one last check up. Having personally benefited from the patient-centered care that is a trademark of family medicine, Dr. Patel was inspired to follow in the footsteps of his childhood doctor and join a family medicine practice after his residency.
THE CHALLENGE
Dr. Patel became the owner of Oviedo Family Health Center in 2002. At the time, the practice served around 1500 patients. Today, that number has grown to over 4000 patients and counting.
While business has boomed, so has the demand for documentation. “When I first joined the practice, we decided to move to an EHR to give us a consolidated view of our patient records and improve documentation accessibility and efficiency. But as we’ve grown it has gotten harder and harder to keep up with all of the documentation and logistics that come along with it.”
Dr. Patel found himself regularly bringing work home to meet these increased administrative demands, somedays wrapping up as late as 10 or 11 in the evening. This left him exhausted, stressed, and with very little time to spend with his wife and two children.
THE RESULTS
To help shoulder some of the documentation burden, Dr. Patel considered the possibility of hiring a full-time medical scribe. However, as he began consulting peers and weighing his options, Dr. Patel learned of an AI scribe that could automate note-taking at a fraction of the cost: DeepScribe. “I was sold on DeepScribe because it more than pays for itself. With the time-savings it gave me, I was able to catch up on patient phone calls while seeing an additional 2 patients a day.”
Financial benefits aside, what Dr. Patel deems the true value of DeepScribe is its ability to restore work-life balance and ultimately, physician mental health. “I’m actually getting home in time to go to my kid’s soccer practice and talk to my daughter who’s off in college. I can spend time with my wife. It’s not only cost-savings, it’s a social and mental health saver.”
Given the mounting body of research linking physician mental health to patient outcomes, Dr. Patel sees this as a huge win for his patients. “If your brain is in a rut, you may not be making the best decisions. DeepScribe has given me the time to take care of myself - so that I can take care of my patients.”
CHALLENGES
- Growing documentation demands with growing business
- Long hours & overtime to meet work demands
- Decreased physician mental health
SOLUTION
- Scalable, cost-effective documentation
- 1hr/day saved on note-taking
RESULTS
- 10 additional patients per week
- Restored work/life balance
- Better mental health and patient outcomes
