Hello Jeremy and Molly I'm going to make you co host so that you can start video and share screen. All right. Can you hear us okay. Yep, and I'll make sure you get your full 30 minutes. Okay. Thanks. You're welcome. Are we able to not are we all still on the screen or just the presenters, I can move you down to attendees. Yep, that'd be great just so I think it'd be great to just have Molly and Jeremy on the screen. Yep, no problem. Um, let me just. I'll work on that as we get started but I want to go ahead and let them get started and we'll drop you guys down. Thanks. Welcome, everybody. I'm going to give it just a moment and introduce our next speakers while everyone is coming into the room. Yep, everyone's jumping in now. So, can you see my screen. No, I don't see your screen yet. Okay, let's go. There we go. Thanks, Jeremy. So our next session here is unlocking the benefits of AI in orthopedic care. So this session will explore how AI can enhance both clinical and administrative aspects of orthopedic practice management. So we have Molly van or director of specialty solutions at next gen and Jeremy Dixon the vice president of product management next gen healthcare. They're going to be leading this session. So, without further ado, I'm going to be handing it off to Molly and Jeremy. Perfect. Thank you so much, Jessica. Good afternoon again everyone. Welcome to unlocking the benefits of AI and orthopedic care, and our brief time with you today we will explore how AI is reshaping the medical landscape, addressing key challenges and opening new frontiers in patient care and practice management. Okay. I'm Molly van art as Jessica said director of specialty solutions at next gen healthcare, and with me today, Jeremy Dixon. Hi everyone, I'm the vice president of product management at next gen healthcare and I oversee several products, and some of those over the last year have been involving some of our AI solutions into the market so awesome to be with you guys here and kind of take you through kind of where we see the industry going with AI, but I wanted to kind of first step back and look at a parallel that we can all look at 10 years ago well more than 10 years ago now, making me feel old. If we think back to 2007, that was the initial launch of the iPhone, and there was a ton of excitement and promise around how this was going to revolutionize computing for the better, and essentially having a PC right in your pocket. But we all know, if you think back to those years right. It is not the iPhone or Android, for those of you who are Android users of what we have today right today it is essentially you can do everything on it, it has replaced many devices and tools that we use it's our now our taxi hailing service. But if you think back to that in that initial iPhone, it was chunky, it was heavy, it was slow, it was expensive, you had to pay for it out of contract, it only worked on AT&T, there was Intenegate in there on the first couple of iterations. Apple Maps might not have got you to the right location in the early days because they were building out that service. So, in the same way that we're all excited around AI, and like we were with the initial mobile revolution. It is doing some fantastic things some magical things but there are also some shortcomings if any of you out there have used GPT or Claude or Gemini models. It has the ability to do these magical things and these magical moments but it also has some moments of fantastic blunders, I will call it that, and less than ideal outcomes. So, I think everyone is super excited about the potential but we're still in the early days and it's just the tip of the potential that we're kind of living in. And again, right, GPT and these large language model transformers have only been out for a year, year and a half. So, there's a decade of evolution to come to really see the full value of what AI will bring to the industry. So, Molly and I do a lot of talking with providers across the spectrum, particularly in the ortho side, but just in general, and providers want this and what I say they want this is they want technology to fade into the background. Many providers that I talk to, they tell a story about wrestling technology to the ground and getting it to submit to their will, and in various different ways. And what they're actually asking for is for a technology assistant to work with them to surface relevant data, to make the connection points for them and augment their work so that they can ultimately get back to the human connection of the patient and provider. And, you know, we all know that documentation and working with technology consumes anywhere from 30 to 50% of providers and staff time. And what we hear consistently is that I didn't go to school to become a data entry person. I went to school to help people to work with patients and ultimately make them better, but they feel this pull and this strain of technology and we're all consumers of healthcare and almost every practice that I've walked into for the last decade, there is a computer between me and the front desk staff, the provider, the nurse, etc, etc. There's this barrier of human connection and we all crave that connection. Molly, anything to add here? Yeah, I think, Jeremy, that is exactly what we're facing. It is that barrier between the clinicians and the patients that I think everybody's looking for a tool that can truly help them get rid of that barrier. Yep, exactly. Now, let's move on to what it probably feels like today. And this is a bit of a dramatization, I'll be the first to admit, but, right, there's still a lot of paper in practices. There's still a lot of inefficiencies. There's these disparate systems. People are kind of probably flying around the practice, trying to gather information. And when we talk to providers, right, this notion of pajama time in the evening is very real for a vast majority of them. Not everyone, but we talk to so many where they go home late from work, they hang out with family, friends, their personal lives, and then 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night, they're logging on to finish notes, to finish billing, to get ready in preparation for the next day. And all of this is because there's inefficiencies across the systems in healthcare. And that's really kind of the promise of what we're hoping AI can actually do is to problem by problem start to reduce the burden of these systems being a ton of friction to interact with and also not interfacing with each other well. So I'm going to turn it over to Molly so she can kind of take you through some of the high level challenges that we're seeing across the ambulatory space. And none of these are surprises to anybody on this call. The pandemic's initial impact led to considerable employment shortages in orthopedics and other ambulatory practices, with ongoing difficulties in maintaining adequate staffing, not only for support staff, which obviously we're all feeling that but also in the shortage of nurses and medical technicians, and even doctors. And several elements contribute to the complexity of reimbursement, including challenges associated with the payer mix, and the unique rules of various payer systems. This complexity continues to place a growing demand on the time and resources of practices, particularly in the realms of coding, billing, adherence to regulations and the resolution of denials and appeals. Again, an area where staff shortages also are a big concern. These aspects are vital for the stability of revenue cycle management, and the overall financial well being of a practice. Also, evolving payer requirements and the shift to value based care also requires navigating the complexities of health care that can be daunting, yet it presents opportunities to enhance patient care and ensure financial sustainability. The shift towards APMs and alternative payment models underscores the significance of quality metrics, such as patient outcomes, readmission rates and satisfaction scores. Moreover, effective risk management through identifying high risk patients and implementing targeted care strategies is crucial. All these factor into the intensity and the reliance on integrated technology systems and data analytics, which are all essential for monitoring performance and complying with payer requirements. But the burden of documentation and technology in an orthopedic practice is a major concern. We know it, we hear it every day, impacting both the operational efficiency and the well being of the staff and the providers. Practices are required to maintain detailed documentation for compliance and reimbursement, necessitating the integration of newer technologies such as AI to streamline certain processes. This integration, however, often involves significant systems for scheduling, billing, paying, patient management, and it all contributes to that overall administrative burden. But also the orthopedic market is evolving. Currently, independent practices account for approximately only 40% of the ambulatory musculoskeletal practices. This consolidation creates specific challenges, operationally and financially, and can complicate the negotiations with insurance companies, which can put a financial strain on the practice and impact patient access to care. So Jeremy, what can we do about that though? Yeah, and you know, there's a lot happening currently, obviously, in some of the older AI technologies out there, but there's a lot going on with the next wave of Gen AI large language models. And, you know, we've seen this, right, the automation of having AI power assistance to help schedule follow-ups, book appointments, right, taking the burden off of the front desk staff, and also giving patients a better way to schedule those visits, right, instead of hanging on to a call for 10 or 15 minutes on wait to get that appointment scheduled, let patients interact with text messaging AI agents to kind of self-schedule and work something on their end. Not only do they get help faster, but it takes less burden off of the care staff. And then obviously, you know, Molly talked about some of the documentation fatigue that's going on. There's a wave of ambient solutions out there in the market that I'm sure you're hearing about or are starting to implement. You know, obviously, it's early days, and they're really good at understanding the conversation in the room and starting to take a crack at summarizing the narrative data. But as this matures and evolves over time, it's going to make, you know, suggestions for clinical decisions. It's going to get more into the discrete data, make recommendations on, you know, what the right solution is based on the patient's insurance, etc., etc. It's going to evolve and get more complex. And then as we look down into some of the future solutions, right, getting those real-time reimbursement analytics at the point of care so that patients as well as practices can make better care decisions based on the patient's demographics and insurance will be huge. And then as Molly touched on the competition and consolidation, right, executives and business folks having AI as a business strategist to understand the market, understand how they can differentiate themselves, et cetera, et cetera, will be huge. I mean, this is an area that I myself, I'm using AI today. And it's a huge benefit because you have this supercomputer able to gather wide ranges of complex information and distill it down very quickly. And again, it's not always a hundred percent right, but it gets you into a really good starting place to kind of figure out what you have and then address the gaps that you still need to go out and get. Molly, any other thing you've seen in the market that you think is exciting for this group to hear about? Yeah, one of the critical things, you touched on the real-time reimbursement analytics, but also tools to help with that revenue cycle management process, not only from the billing perspective, but even that documentation perspective to ensure that we're meeting the needs of the very specific payer contract that you might be, you know, have in front of you from a patient perspective. Those are tools that'll help really make that efficiency not only ring true, but also potentially be a differentiation between patient to patient based on the documentation needs, as we all deal with complex documentation requirements of the individual payers. And as we've talked about, Jeremy and I both see this on a regular basis and hear from providers, all of this technology really is from an augmentation perspective. It's not meant to replace anything specifically that you're doing or anybody to be very honest, but to help come alongside and actually engage even deeper in specific areas like we have listed on this slide. Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about a few more ways that AI can partner with orthopedic care right now, to be very honest. AI enhances efficiency by automating administrative duties, enabling healthcare workers to devote more time to true patient care. Intelligent systems assist in decision-making like we've talked about, reducing that cognitive load of the medical staff and the providers. Cutting edge AI technology makes practices more appealing to top healthcare professionals. And well, AI enhanced care leads to improved outcomes. And obviously that more personalized patient experience, all things that we're all looking for. Smart systems aid in decision-making. Again, limiting that cognitive burden on the healthcare professional. We say that a lot because the reality is that is one of those challenges we keep hearing from providers over and over. These systems can analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately. Providing healthcare professionals with insights and recommendations that would be way too time-consuming and often difficult to obtain manually. This allows medical staff to focus more on the patient and less on those administrative tasks and the documentation necessary. Cutting AI technology is increasingly being integrated into healthcare practices to enhance the quality of care, streamline those operations and attract top professionals. But AI driven tools can also automate administrative tasks which allow healthcare providers to really focus on the patient and less on paperwork. And AI powered care, again, results in better outcomes. And then that tailored patient experience, which to be very honest, the consumers are demanding. Yeah, for sure. Especially on that patient satisfaction side. I know myself, right? The fact that I'm getting text messages and emails to pre-fill out information and then I get to that provider practice and then they hand me a piece of paper, right? Is a very frustrating experience. And I think as healthcare gets more into a consumer model, the patients are going to expect practices to deliver solutions that are making it easier for them and more convenient for them to access care as well as keep track. And obviously own their equation of the care paradigm as well. Yeah, patients are expecting that level of not only interoperability, but also just the tools that make their experience even easier for them. And of course, they're not necessarily thinking about what it means for the clinicians or the staff, but everybody's looking for tools that are gonna enhance their ability to do their jobs and treat patients. Yep, absolutely. So I've got two more slides and then we'll kind of get you back on track. I know we started off a little bit late and then we'll open up for questions, but I wanted to bring some real world data from our company. So we have a brand new ambient assist technology that does the ambient note-taking. And in a recent survey, we pulled some of our trial users around the concerns that they have about ambient assist. And as you can see, the number one item was just trusting the AI systems. They're brand new. There's a lot of news out there around how fantastic it is, but there's also a lot of publication around the blunders. So of course, providers and staff are skeptics about the accuracy of this, because ultimately, this has to be a benefit to them and it cannot make egregious mistakes. So what we see is companies are really hyper-focused on a very specific problem area in tuning these models to not hallucinate, to be very purpose-built. And to Molly's point, right? AI is here to augment humans, not replace them. And my working theory is that humans using AI are going to outpace humans not using AI in the same way that technology has evolved over time, right? To not use a computer or a cell phone today, you're kind of far behind the curve. You can take that route, but life is a little bit more challenging if you do not have those devices in your hands. The other thing that we see too is that it requires additional training, because this is not transcription or speech to text. It's not quite a scribe. You have to learn how to leverage the technology, talk in the room in a different way than what you are normally used to. So there's a bit of training, there's a bit of gap in figuring out how the technology works, what it can do, what it can't do. And that does take some tinkering and also takes some change management, which is frankly some of the hardest part of adopting new technology. And then last, right? And you can obviously read the other ones, but we're also seeing cost be a limiting factor, right? There's brand new chips that have to be bought to be able to make this technology possible. It requires a ton of compute power to process all of this data in near real time. And on top of that, right? There's multiple solutions that organizations like yourselves are looking at to solve problems. So if you're looking at five, 10, 15 AI solutions, that bill is going to add up quick. You're gonna have to make a decision on where are you gonna get the most bang for the buck? Where is the biggest ROI? And are these tools actually bringing back time, efficiency, and more money into the practice, right? And that's what I think you're seeing now is practices are being very choosy on where to spend money in AI because they want to see a real return and that this is not indeed vaporware software. Anything to add, Molly, that you've heard as well in some of the AI challenges about the industry? Yeah, I think one of the things that is very interesting and will be interesting to track in the years to come is how these very specific challenges and concerns change. Just like, you know, hearkening back to the early days of the iPhone, we didn't know what we didn't know. And as technology continued to advance, we obviously expect certain things. The thing that we see right now with AI and the challenges we're facing will not necessarily be the same challenges even a year from now. We have come so far already in this short amount of time, specifically AI in healthcare. But we also know that this is going to be a path that will continue to evolve and there will be some bends in the road that maybe are a little sharper than we're all prepared for. But cost will continue to decrease. Training will become easier. Errors won't be as much of a concern before we know it. But they'll be replaced with probably different challenges instead, which is exactly what we're all expecting. Yeah, exactly. So I will not leave it with doom and gloom because in the same study that we ran, we did ask those providers who said, this is cool, but not right now. Do you think that AI is going to play a significant role in the healthcare documentation of the future, right? And it's an overwhelming yes, right? People see the potential. Is it ready for primetime for all providers right this second? No. And that's true of a lot of AI technology. And even in general, I asked common people, hey, have you even used chat GPT? And they go, oh no, but I've heard of it, right? So there's this buzz around the technology, but many have not even tried to tinker and play with the software just yet. But everyone can see the potential of how this is going to make our lives easier, better, more convenient, and ultimately more productive human beings. Because since the invention of the wheel, I'm convinced that we're all looking for that next step of productivity and comfort, right? It's all about getting to that next level of efficiency. And it is encouraging that the resounding answer was yes, because that means that even though there are the challenges we're facing right now with it, people can see beyond that. They can see what can be. And that's going to be important as we, as a provider of some of these solutions, continue to innovate. We want to make sure that everybody's looking at it from the perspective of this can be a good opportunity here. Because we believe it is. And obviously our survey shows that too. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, I will end it on that note and we'll open it up for questions. I don't know how much time we have, maybe three to four minutes. Yeah, we do. So definitely feel free to drop any questions in the chat here. And while we're doing that, I want to thank you all so much for the great information. I feel like we've covered so much ground already today. And our next session coming up is going to be more on that legal side of it. So you sort of prefaced that well with, what are some of the concerns that people are having and the hope is that that gives another perspective of things to be considering. And so I appreciate you sort of teeing that up so well. Of course. Well, I think that's part of why we're all here today is this is a conversation that needs to be had not just in our individual practices, but across the whole market and industry to ensure that as we're looking at it, we are taking into account those concerns and continue as vendors to also address those where we can, but also the dialogue has to occur to even be able to get to that point. So that's why today is an important summit and it's important to have these conversations and continue them. Awesome. So what I can do is I can grab Jeremy, you're in Molly's email and drop it into the chat as well. And that way, if people think of questions later, they know how to reach out to you all. And- That would be great. While I am doing that, I'm gonna drop it in the main lobby chat, that way nobody misses it when this call ends. And then we are going to be taking a five minute break for everyone to just take a moment and grab a drink, use the restroom, whatever you need to do. And we're gonna be coming up next with legal considerations for AI in healthcare. So again, thank you, Molly and Jeremy so much for your presentation and obviously also for sponsoring the event. It's been great to have this partnership with you for this. And we will see everyone right about 2.05 Eastern. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you.

AI in orthopedic care

patient care

practice management

administrative automation

healthcare efficiency

AI challenges