New Mexico-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services is scaling its use of GW RhythmX’s AI-powered precision care platform, with 200 of Presbyterian’s primary care clinicians now using the system to help surface clinical insights and give evidence-based recommendations at the point of care.
Presbyterian is a nine-hospital system with a statewide health plan and multi-specialty medical group. It serves largely rural communities across New Mexico, where patients often travel several hours for a single appointment.
The health system adopted GW RhythmX’s precision care platform about a year ago to help ensure clinicians can quickly identify care gaps and treatment opportunities when patients who travel long distances come in for care.
Clinicians can use the platform to quickly search a patient’s chart, pull up key clinical data and view treatment recommendations during a visit — all within Presbyterian’s Epic EHR. For example, a provider might ask the system to show a patient’s recent echocardiogram results and trends in their ejection fraction rather than digging through specialist notes. The tool can also flag when a patient’s condition might be worsening, prompting clinicians to order additional tests or adjust medications.
“I grew up in a small town. I knew what it was like to have my family have to travel three hours to get to a major medical center,” said Lori Walker, Presbyterian’s chief medical information officer. “We have to make every minute count.”
When Presbyterian was first thinking about deploying clinical decision support workflows in its EHR, the health system initially tried to build a tool for diabetes care — but the effort was complex and lacked the AI capabilities needed to scale across many conditions, Walker said. GW RhythmX offered an AI-driven platform that could deliver clinical recommendations across a wide range of conditions, she explained.
GW RhythmX’s platform can recognize and provide guidance on more than 200 conditions, from common chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension to complex or less common issues, such as progressing kidney disease or rare infections.
Presbyterian began the rollout with a small group of nine clinicians, strategically selected to include both enthusiastic adopters and more skeptical providers. Walker said this approach allowed the team to build trust, validate the tool and refine its workflows before expanding to 200 clinicians across the system.
Since the broader rollout to 200 clinicians last December, Presbyterian providers have used the AI assistant more than 20,000 times, Walker noted.
“We’re definitely hearing from [clinicians] that they’re able to make quicker decisions at the point of care. They feel like they’re spending a lot less time in chart search and chart review,” she stated.
The goal is simple: to give providers the information they need at the point of care and to make long trips to the clinic worthwhile for patients.
Photo: Morsa Images, Getty Images
