If AI scribing is new to you, finding the right partner can often be enough to keep you from getting started—but don’t let it. Regardless of the size or structure of your rehab therapy organization, the payoff of AI scribing is too great to pass up or sleep on. And navigating the market of options doesn’t have to be overwhelming; we’ve outlined some differentiating factors and what you should look for below.
While many AI scribing options on the market promise similar functionality, some will have features that set them apart. Some organizations offer a scribing solution only, while others have a much broader solution, and scribing is either a feature of their larger product or an add-on product to their primary offering. And while there are pros and cons to both of those scenarios, it can be hard to understand how an organization will or won’t meet your organization’s needs just by the information on their website.
A demo or sales call is a great opportunity to learn more about an AI scribing solution if you know what questions to ask and what to look for in the answers. Below are some categories and questions that should tell you a lot about how an organization prioritizes product development and improvement, accuracy, compliance, integration, and more.
An AI scribing solution tailored to physical therapy offers distinct advantages, including a deep understanding of PT-specific terminology, workflows, and compliance requirements. This specialization enables more accurate and relevant documentation, reducing the time therapists spend editing and ensuring better alignment with payer and regulatory standards. Additionally, it can integrate with physical therapy EMRs and provide insights unique to the field, such as functional outcome measures and progress tracking. Its generalized nature may lead to less precise documentation for physical therapists, necessitating more manual editing and potentially falling short of capturing the nuances of PT workflows. If you’re considering a generic scribing solution, be sure to ask:
How a scribing solution communicates and passes data back and forth from your EMR is critical to your success with the solution. Nearly all scribing solutions are Chrome extensions that sit on top of your chosen EMR, but not all function or interact with your EMR similarly. Be wary of solutions that promise many integrations but don’t have formal partnerships to speak of or that claim they can work on “any” or “every” EMR. This is a strong signal that their integration is more likely to have “copy/paste” functionality, which can lead to slower workflows and a frustrating documentation process. Many of these will also highlight their “one-click entry” as a key component of their EMR integration, which is a better workflow than copying and pasting from one to the other manually, but leaves a lot of room for errors and doesn’t account for the natural disruption of clinic life. When you are talking with the sales team, be sure to ask:
CPT coding is one of the most significant learning curves for new and experienced providers. Because CPT coding can be overwhelming to therapists, it’s common for them to pick a broad code like therapeutic exercise (97110) and use it consistently and, in some cases, even exclusively. This practice is not only risky in that it can trigger an audit, but it also robs a clinic of being able to bill for the level of care that was actually provided to the patient. The AI scribing solution you choose should help you account for these challenges and aid therapists in selecting the appropriate CPT codes at the point of care. When effectively built into the scribing solution, it shortens the learning curve, saves the therapist time, and improves the accuracy of your organization's coding (and, in theory, billing). Ask every vendor:
While the time savings AI scribing solutions provide are well documented and an enormous help to clinicians who have historically been overwhelmed and burdened by hours of documentation time at home, on nights, weekends, and over their lunch hours, rehab therapists need more than just fast notes. The outputs from an AI scribe should also improve a therapist’s compliance, accounting for the components in the documentation that regulators and payers require. Still, discerning what an organization means when it tells you its AI scribe has compliance built in takes a little digging. Be sure to ask:
The best technology solutions are built with the collaboration, validation, and quality assurance of clinicians who understand real-life workflows in a rehab therapy clinic. To choose the AI scribe that will serve your rehab therapy organization best, you should be asking, “Where are the PTs and OTs?” In other words,