Piedmont Healthcare Improves Clinical Documentation, Physician Productivity with Nuance AI-Powered Solutions
Nuance’s AI-powered solutions deliver more complete patient story, quantifiable time-savings for care teams

BURLINGTON, Mass. and ATLANTA, GA., October 30, 2018 – Nuance Communications, Inc. and Piedmont Healthcare, an integrated healthcare system with nearly 600 locations and 11 hospitals, today announced that Nuance’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions have driven valuable improvements in clinical documentation accuracy and efficiency at Piedmont Healthcare, and quantifiable time-savings for its care teams. In an effort to create a one-of-a-kind experience that always puts patient care first, Piedmont Healthcare has implemented Dragon Medical One, Nuance’s AI-powered speech recognition platform, PowerMic Mobile, a secure microphone app that turns any workstation into a dictation station and Dragon Medical Advisor, an AI-powered computer-assisted physician documentation (CAPD) solution.

“We chose Nuance for both their products as well as their service and support capabilities. Nuance provides a vital set of tools to our physicians with innovations and resources to boost their efficiency and quality of work,” said Robert Budman, M.D., chief medical information officer at Piedmont Healthcare. “In just a short period of time, Nuance Dragon Medical One and PowerMic Mobile have improved our physicians’ ability to more quickly and accurately create a pertinent document of our patients' stories. Because of the success thus far, we will be expanding the rollout of these solutions, including computer-assisted physician documentation, to a broader group of clinicians and caregivers in the weeks and months to come.”

Dr. Budman went on to share the following feedback he’s received from physicians using Nuance’s AI-powered solutions:

        • “It has helped my clinic workflow tremendously. No more going back to my office.”;
        • “It is revolutionary!”;
        • “I absolutely love it and I have really encouraged my team to embrace using Dragon.”;
        • “The new software… Dragon Medical One, is exceptionally accurate.”; and
        • “The notes are actually telling us something useful!”

Piedmont Healthcare physicians credit Dragon Medical One and its built-in productivity tools like AutoTexts and Advanced Step-by-Step Commands for productivity gains. Collectively, physicians using AutoTexts now save hundreds of additional hours per month and capture 65 percent more documentation per hour using their voice to input information — resulting in more comprehensive patient stories. With Advanced Step-by-Step, which provides a higher level of automation to complete workflows, physicians have the ability to give complex voice commands that contain one or more steps and can easily navigate between entry fields. Advanced Step-by-Step not only increases quality and completeness of documentation, but also saves time and improves physician, care team, and patient experiences.

Dragon Medical One, a HITRUST CSF certified solution, is completely cloud-based and seamlessly integrated into existing workflows so users can enjoy consistent documentation experiences regardless of their location. Greater ease of installation and virtualization support, higher portability and access, greater accuracy, and built-in productivity tools all contributed to increases in adoption.

Beyond the productivity improvements provided by Dragon Medical One and PowerMic Mobile, Piedmont Healthcare providers will be able to further enhance the quality of documentation with the support of Dragon Medical Advisor. AI-powered Dragon Medical Advisor analyzes patient notes as they’re created so physicians can immediately update their documentation with the appropriate level of specificity while the details of the patient visit are still in front of them. Notes are more precise and complete, and physicians receive fewer post-discharge and out-of-context queries from CDI and coding teams. As physicians begin to naturally document more complete notes, the advisor fades into the background.

“Piedmont Healthcare is a distinguished, long-standing institution that understands the importance of empowering its physicians with innovations like voice-driven CDI to ensure optimal efficiency and productivity resulting in complete documentation that fully reflects the care provided,” said Michael Clark, general manager, provider solutions at Nuance Healthcare. “The productivity benefits Piedmont Healthcare’s physicians experience with Dragon Medical One, PowerMic Mobile and Dragon Medical Advisor help them save valuable time that they are now able to repurpose back into patient engagement while improving documentation that benefits patient care.”

About Piedmont Healthcare
A private, not-for-profit organization with nearly 600 locations serving nearly 2 million patients across Georgia, Piedmont is transforming healthcare, creating a destination known for the best clinicians and a one-of-a-kind experience that always puts patients first. Today, more than 110 years since it was founded, Piedmont is known as a leading health system in cancer care, treatment of heart disease and organ transplantation with 11 hospitals, 24 urgent care centers, 28 Piedmont QuickCare locations, 555 Piedmont Clinic physician practice locations and more than 2,000 Piedmont Clinic members. Our 22,000-plus employees dedicate themselves to making a positive difference in every life we touch and our commitment doesn’t stop there. In FY 2018, Piedmont provided more than $225 million in uncompensated care community benefit programming in an effort to better the health and well-being of the people in the communities we serve. For more information, visit www.piedmont.org.

About Nuance Healthcare
Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance healthcare solutions capture, improve and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year, helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organizations to drive meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding, quality and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and accurate view of patient care.

About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that can understand, analyze and respond to human language to increase productivity and amplify human intelligence. With decades of domain and artificial intelligence expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organizations – in global industries that include healthcare, telecommunications, automotive, financial services, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact Information
Palmer Reuther
Corporate Communications
Nuance Healthcare
M: 978-697-9227
palmer.reuther@nuance.com