Tanner Health Deploys Abridge Across Specialties With Focus on Transforming Behavioral Health Practice
Tray Lowery
trlowery@tanner.org
770-812-6180
Tanner Health, the premier provider of healthcare in west Georgia and east Alabama, is implementing Abridge’s AI platform for clinical conversations enterprise-wide. Due to viral growth and success within behavioral health clinicians during the initial rollout, Tanner will be focusing on deploying Abridge rapidly to those practices.
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Pictured is a quote from behavioral health specialist Dr. Kenneth Genova, MD, sharing how Abridge's innovative platform has allowed him to focus more on patient care. (Photo: Business Wire)
Tanner selected Abridge after a head-to-head comparison with another documentation tool. A small cohort of Tanner clinicians used both technologies during consecutive pilots, with some using both concurrently for a single visit to compare clinical note output. Due to clinician feedback that Abridge is strongly preferred for its superior note quality, the platform will now be deployed at Tanner across care settings, specialties, and languages.
“The impact of Abridge on clinicians has been even better than I expected,” said Bonnie Boles, MD, MBA, FCCP, Tanner’s Chief Medical Information Officer. “A busy primary care doctor reported that this is the first time in 30 years she is finishing her notes by the end of clinic. A surgeon told me that he used to spend 4-5 hours at the end of every day to finish documentation—now he’s done in an hour.”
Abridge automatically detects care setting and generates the appropriate clinical documentation, even in complex sound environments with multiple speakers. During the validation period, Tanner discovered that Abridge worked particularly well for its behavioral health clinicians by supporting them in fostering a deeper, more meaningful connection with patients. Here is what Tanner behavioral health clinicians had to say about Abridge:
“Abridge has helped so much in connecting with my patients,” said Darron Lewis, MD, a board certified psychiatrist who specializes in child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry, as well as addiction. “The body language I’m able to give off is better, and I’m able to receive their body language, and it’s amazing just how much of a difference that makes.”
“We have guardians who are coming in with their other kids and there are a lot of distractions in the room,” said April Fortenberry, MSN, APRN, CPNP-PC, PMHS, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Tanner who specializes in child and adolescent behavioral health. “I don’t know how it does its magic, but it does a really good job of filtering out non-essential information.”
“In psychiatry in particular, we want to be very present with our patients,” said Kenneth Genova, MD, Tanner Vice President and Executive Medical Director, who oversees psychiatry and behavioral health at Willowbrooke at Tanner. “With Abridge, all of the note-taking is handled, so the time to create documentation is markedly less and the cognitive burden is virtually negligible. Our productivity is up and we have people saying it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them in their practice. And it’s not just the folks out of school; it’s also the 60-year-old psychiatrists who want it, too.”
Abridge is rapidly becoming the AI platform of choice for enterprise-wide deployment at leading healthcare systems across the country, including Duke Health, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Corewell Health, Deaconess Health System, Reid Health, University of Vermont Health Network, CHRISTUS Health, UChicago Medicine, Sutter Health, Yale New Haven Health System, UCI Health, Emory Healthcare, The University of Kansas Health System, UPMC, and many more. Abridge has also formed partnerships with Wolters Kluwer, OpenNotes, and other leading healthcare organizations to enrich the Abridge platform ecosystem. In early 2024, Abridge announced a $150M Series C financing, which included a strategic investment from NVIDIA.
About Tanner Health
Tanner Health is a five-hospital non-profit health system providing convenient, personalized health care to communities across west Georgia and east Alabama. Tanner Health physicians and staff provide the latest technology and treatment options to advance the health of their patients. In addition to their regional hospitals and care centers, Tanner operates Tanner Medical Group, one of metro Atlanta’s largest multi-specialty physician groups. Learn more at tanner.org.
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"With Abridge, all of the note-taking is handled, so the time to create documentation is markedly less and the cognitive burden is virtually negligible," said Dr. Genova, Tanner Vice President and Executive Medical Director at Willowbrooke at Tanner.
