The University of Delaware Increases Patient Volume and Clinician Satisfaction
The University of Delaware team realized documentation was costing their team and their patients valuable time. They turned to NextGen Clinical AI to boost efficiency and return their focus to care and education.
The University of Delaware
Originally founded in 1743, the University of Delaware is a research university located in Newark, Delaware. Today, they offer a variety of graduate, undergraduate, and doctoral degree programs across a wide range of subjects and fields of study. The University of Delaware College of Health Sciences serves nearly 6,000 patients annually and completes over 30,000 unique clinical visits.
NextGen Healthcare Solutions:
- NextGen® Enterprise EHR
- NextGen® Enterprise PM
- NextGen® Mobile Pro
- NextGen® Clinical AI
Time savings
NextGen Clinical AI allowed clinicians to save time on visits, leading to higher patient volumes, more care delivered, and increased revenue
Greater staff satisfaction
Clinicians and nurse practitioners at University of Delaware enjoyed better workflows and stronger satisfaction with less documentation burden
Improved educational experience
By focusing more on care and less on documentation, the University of Delaware is able to expand and improve educational opportunities for nursing students
Expanded impact
By decreasing documentation time and increasing patient volume, the University of Delaware can expand their care impact to treat more of their community
Long wait times and lengthy documentation
The University of Delaware oversees multiple clinics under the College of Health Sciences, with specialties ranging from physical therapy to speech and language, primary care, and more. Their team has been utilizing NextGen Enterprise EHR since June of 2022 and has continued to expand with solutions that uniquely improve each of their clinic areas.
Particularly in their nursing primary care area, they noticed long wait times and documentation difficulties that were negatively impacting patient care and hindering the education of nursing students who frequently train in the clinic.
The root of the problem at the University of Delaware was time. Jed Castellucci, Chief Clinical Operating Officer at the University of Delaware, noted that, “Time is a critical factor. Time to document, visit time. And you know, what that does is take time for the community or the people that we’re treating... If we don’t have a product that works, we’re spending more time there, which means we can’t treat and we can’t educate that student to be able to really help overall.”
More patients seen per day
Decrease in average visit time
Saved per provider per day
Clear improvements from the start
Noticing this problem, the University of Delaware team looked to NextGen Clinical AI with AI Scribe. After implementation, they quickly saw improvements across all facets: visit times, patient volume, time savings, provider satisfaction, and nurse education.
“I think Ambient [NextGen Clinical AI] for us has decreased all those facets. It’s really decreased our time. It’s leveraged us to get more patients through, which then helps the students get more experiences from different types of patient care,” Castellucci says.
Less time on documentation. More care delivered.
In their first year using NextGen Clinical AI, the University of Delaware saw a reduction in their average visit time from around 30-40 minutes per patient to 20 minutes. As a result, they have also been able to increase their daily volume from about 8-10 visits per provider per day to about 15 visits. The increase in volume has driven both financial and operational benefits for the clinic.
“It’s allowed them [clinicians] to be a little more flexible so we can bring in patients, which then helps us generate revenue for us to reinvest back into our clinic, which could be other technology pieces for us to leverage,” Castellucci explains.
The response to AI Scribe adoption has been very strong amongst their nurse practitioners. The reduction in visit time has led to time savings of about one hour per day for each of their clinicians. This has also decreased overall documentation burden and improved satisfaction, even with higher volumes.
“Each one of our nurse practitioners has come to us, really saying how well the product has worked for them. Even some comments from them saying, ‘Don’t ever get rid of this product because it would really hinder our process,’” said Castellucci.
As Mobile Pro users, adding Clinical AI to the University of Delaware toolkit has leveled up their workflows. Mobile Pro gives their nurses and nurse practitioners continuous, easy access to patient meds and health history.
“That access is really key for us. But I think the game changer for us was switching over to the Ambient [NextGen Clinical AI] product to really push that,” Castellucci adds.
In addition to improving the educational experiences for their nursing students and boosting clinician satisfaction, the most important benefit for the University of Delaware is the ability to expand their care impact.
“I think that product really can leverage a lot of other places to really get back to what we’re trying to do—treat patients and make sure we have a healthy community,” says Castellucci.
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