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MCG Health, part of the Hearst Health network, and Avo, an artificial intelligence platform that focuses on operational outcomes for healthcare organizations, have announced the launch of a new AI assistant that aims to reduce hospital length of stay.
MCG Health combines clinical guidelines from current literature and data with software offerings and analytics.
The Avo clinician support platform enables healthcare organizations to standardize care and reduce burnout by integrating guidelines and protocols into their clinical workflows.
The companies' collaboration allows MCG to integrate recovery milestones from its proprietary guidelines into electronic health record workflows through Avo’s newest assistant.
According to MCG Health, the discharge assist AI tool can provide hospitalists and case managers with a clear, real-time picture of each patient’s readiness to go home, while also reducing communication delays.
Additionally, it brings in automation and evidence-based analysis, supplying hospitalists and case managers with intelligent discharge recommendations and auto-drafted notes.
The product is live at three pilot sites: New Jersey-based Englewood Health, a large California-based academic medical center and Ozarks Healthcare.
Avo is integrated with several EHRs, including Epic, Meditech and athenahealth.
"Length of stay is an urgent issue in healthcare," Anthony Oliva, chief medical officer for MCG, told MobiHealthNews.
"There is a lot of unexplained variation in LOS, and excess days carry real consequences, higher provider costs in a fixed-payment world, delays in moving patients from the ED to inpatient units that result in ED boarding and increased risks of harm for patients who should only remain hospitalized when the benefits outweigh the risks, due to iatrogenic (errors) harm and delirium, deconditioning," said Oliva.
"MCG discharge milestones, when used properly, can reduce this variation and prevent unnecessary extensions of LOS, but they remain underused," he added. "Avo makes it simple to apply these milestones in a standardized way, making readiness for discharge more objective. It also enables rapid drafting of discharge summaries for physicians to edit, improving efficiency for the patient, clinician and payer alike."
THE LARGER TREND
In August, MCG announced that the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services had adopted the MCG care guidelines as its new standard for determining medical necessity for services, items, procedures and levels of care provided to medical assistance (MA) beneficiaries.
The transition applies to all providers enrolled in the MA program who render services in the fee-for-service delivery system.
In August, Avo partnered with Meditech, enabling integration of Avo’s AI Scribe product within its Meditech Expanse EHR system.
Meditech customers can now access Avo’s ambient listening technology natively in their EHR, receiving AI-driven support for documentation and enhancing their ambient notes with AI-powered summarization, care recommendations, differential diagnoses, clinical documentation improvement and coding suggestions.
In 2024 – the year AvoMD rebranded and changed its name to Avo – the company launched Ask Avo, a first-of-its-kind, customizable AI consult tool that seamlessly integrates into electronic health records systems.
Ask Avo leverages patient data, local population context, institutional pathways and protocols, and continually updated society guidelines to ensure trustworthy and relevant responses to complex clinical questions.
Boston-based Mass General Brigham teamed up with AvoMD to help rapid response teams identify patients at risk of fatal respiratory or cardiac arrest outside of the ICU. End users see the Avo Point of Care app or Avo tab in their EHR as a clinician-facing tool available in their workflow.
In 2023, AvoMD closed $5 million in a seed funding round led by AlleyCorp. Epsilon Health, MedMountain Ventures and Las Olas also participated in the round alongside Dr. Kavita Patel, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates and senior policy advisor at Stanford University, and existing investors Mirae and Dunamu.
