Qualifacts, an EHR company serving behavioral health organizations, has introduced additional AI tools to simplify provider workflows.
Qualifacts' iQ Assistant, which helps reduce manual work for providers, is now available for free to all customers. It provides answers to EHR questions and locates documentation in seconds, operating as a browser extension.
Additionally, Qualifacts has enhanced its iQ Clinical Documentation product, first launched last year. The customizable ambient scribe supports documentation for a variety of encounters, including intake and assessments, both via telehealth and in-person. It is now available in more than 120 languages. Thanks to the tool, customers have seen an 80% reduction in clinical notetaking time and 60% of clients feel more connected to patients as a result, according to Qualifacts. Extra features, like mobile recording support and group therapy capabilities, will roll out later this year.
“[Clinicians] didn’t get into the field to be technologists,” Qualifacts CEO Josh Schoeller told Fierce Healthcare. “They got into the field to help people. So the better the technology can help them do their job, help drive outcomes and be less administrative, the better.”
More tools are slated for release later this year, including iQ Agent, intended to autonomously handle labor-intensive operational tasks like appointment scheduling and revenue cycle management. The company hopes it will eventually support treatment planning by automating clicks in the system and providing a template customizable by providers.
That type of automation is the future of clinical care in behavioral health, Schoeller predicted. Instead of a human filling out intake assessments and other forms, they can automate it in the background. AI is endlessly customizable and scalable, as well as faster and more accurate than traditional software, he added. “It really allows us to focus on expanding things that are more important, like business intelligence and dashboards and patient engagement,” Schoeller said.
The speed with which the technology is evolving is reflected in the sentiment in the market, Schoeller said. A year ago, there were notable rumblings from provider groups that they were not interested in AI. This year, most have said it’s their top priority. The goal is never to replace a provider, Schoeller said. “They are not looking for AI to replace the clinician and give diagnoses,” he added. “They are very interested in it reducing administrative burden.”
Qualifacts, founded in 2000, serves more than 2,500 behavioral health entities today. It specializes in working with community-based, complex mental health centers with multi-service lines. Schoeller previously held executive roles at Elsevier and LexisNexis Risk Solutions. When he joined Qualifacts in 2023, he thought it would be important for the tech company to seize on AI and build something in-house. “I’m a firm believer that AI accentuates the value of the underlying software, so it’s really important to own both axes,” he explained.
Qualifacts’ AI tools are custom-built on ChatGPT-4. Going with an established large language model (LLM) was preferred for several reasons. GPT-4 outperformed other models Qualifacts considered on clinical accuracy and efficacy. It also offered flexibility. “We will never be outpaced by the technology, because we can always take advantage of whatever’s new and best out there,” Schoeller noted. “The LLM is plug-and-play. We could pull it out and put a new one in tomorrow, if we wanted to do that.”