Azra Care Partners With Samimi Orthopedic Group to Automate Provider Workflows and Advance Patient-Centered Equitable Care

LOS ANGELES, October 25, 2023 (Newswire.com) - Azra Care, an equity-conscious AI platform that champions the transition to Value-Based Care (VBC) in Specialty Care, today announced its partnership with Samimi Orthopedic Group. Azra’s expert-curated, clinically validated, Large Language Model (LLM) powers AI-driven clinical workflows and automations tailored to relieve provider workload while fostering enhanced patient-provider relationships. The plug-and-play platform helps healthcare enterprises supercharge patient experiences with voice and text capabilities across all the digital channels and enable healthcare providers to meet and exceed VBC metric benchmarks, all while ensuring care is delivered equitably.

Overburdened Providers

Providers are overburdened with manual outdated workflows and their staff members are buried in paperwork. This has led to provider burnout and record number of nurses are leaving the profession due to dissatisfaction in their work. Moreover, With 1 in 5 Americans expected to be over the age of 65 by 2030, the pressure on healthcare providers will only continue to grow. By 2034, there could be a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians. There is a dire need to expand supply, so digital health companies must provide an opportunistic way to deliver more care.

Azra’s conversational AI can assist providers in delivering the best care possible.

Conversational AI-powered virtual assistant automates touch points along the patient care journey, drives patient satisfaction, and reduces workload for clinical and support staff.

KIMI acts as a round-the-clock single point of contact to answer patient questions, book appointments, refill prescriptions, provide referrals, and triage high-acuity events to the care teams for proactive patient outreach. KIMI is empathetic in responses, context aware, and patients find it highly engaging.  Providers are able to course correct patients' care plans before an adverse event takes place because of the automated alerts sent by KIMI. Automating data collection, care coordination, and 80% of bi-directional communication saves three hours of time for each staff member, each day.

Azra’s SMS virtual assistant will also prep patients for pre-op, including data collection, ensuring medication adherence, and making sure patient questions are answered so when the patient arrives for surgery, they know exactly what to expect. This pre-op program loops in the patient’s caregiver or family member and has shown to drastically reduce no-shows.

“We are excited to partner with Azra Care and offer their AI-powered clinical platform to our patients at Samimi Orthopedic Group. By combining validated care pathways with machine learning, we are confident Azra’s platform will unburden our dedicated staff, elevate the quality of care we provide, and empower our patients on a seamless journey toward recovery,” stated Dr. Omar Rahman, Orthopaedic Surgeon at Samimi Orthopedic Group.

Virtual Triage

Online appointment scheduling equates to large revenue opportunities for healthcare providers, with the revenue potential valued at nearly $3.2 billion. Considering 43% of appointments are scheduled outside of business hours, 24/7 availability is an opportunity for additional revenue flow that a health system operating only during regular business hours will miss out on.

Providers aim to increase bookings and confirmations, but their primary mode of communication with patients is through phone calls. Many patients find these calls cumbersome and avoid answering, especially from unfamiliar numbers. Those who do answer often face long hold times or get caught in back-and-forth "phone tag," leading them to abandon the call. This inefficient communication results in unoccupied slots, last-minute scrambles to contact wait-listed patients, and instances of double-booking. Consequently, providers lose potential revenue and patient satisfaction diminishes.

Azra’s virtual triage solution will assess patients and guide them to the appropriate level of care, in the right care setting, in real time. Samimi Orthopedic Group can further personalize the remote monitoring workflow with the Care Pathways solution for post-discharge monitoring and post-diagnosis support. An AI-powered analytics tool will stratify high-risk patients and generates actionable insights so staff members can prioritize urgent cases and operate at the top of their license. Patient call transcripts are added to the patient’s medical record and patients are sent the call summary right after the call is ended. Samimi Orthopedic will more effectively engage with more new and established patients outside of business hours while simultaneously reducing call center overhead and improving clinical efficiency.

“We are excited to work with Samimi Orthopedic Group where our AI platform and clinical validated LLMs will make a positive impact on patient retention and engagement, which will translate into improved competitiveness, increased revenue and better health outcomes for patients, with the promise of delivering better standards of care at a lower cost,” said Kamran Khan, founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Azra Care.

Delivering whole-person care including SDOH, behavioral, emotional, cultural, financial, and spiritual factors of patients

Social determinants of health (SDOH) affect the distribution of individual-level social risks to health, such as food insecurity, housing instability, and inadequate transportation. These factors coupled with cultural, emotional, and financial conditions of patients increase a patient’s risk of straying from their care program. Moreover, patients discharged from hospitals often face challenges in their transition to self-care at home. They are typically provided with paper-based discharge instructions, which can be overwhelming and difficult to comprehend, especially when dealing with post-surgical pain. Lack of adequate support results in over a third of such patients moving to more expensive care settings within a year. At least half of these readmissions could be prevented with better post-discharge support.

Azra’s LLM is trained to connect with low tech literacy and low health literacy populations. It engages with the patients to better understand their SDOH needs, behavioral preferences, emotional circumstances, cultural practices, and financial and spiritual needs to tailor their care program and connect them with community and government resources, for their specific needs. Azra’s Social Orchestration Engine is utilized by community health workers and care coordinators to engage and help patients in need of health-related social needs. This ensures patients have the necessary resources and social support to follow through their care plan.

"Our partnership with Samimi Orthopedic Group is a transformative step in healthcare, merging cutting-edge AI with a deep commitment to equity-conscious, value-based care. Together, we're building towards healthcare that is more efficient and more equitable," said CEO and co-founder of Azra Care Dr. Christian Pean.

"We are excited for this partnership as we apply Azra’s clinically validated AI platform and LLMs to improve patient access, elevate patient experiences, improve engagement, and foster unparalleled care that Samimi Orthopedic Group offers throughout the care continuum,"  states Kamran Khan, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Azra Care.

Samimi Orthopedic Group

At Samimi Orthopedic Group, we strive to provide compassionate, individualized and innovative Orthopedic care. We understand the importance of musculoskeletal health and it is our mission to return our patients to their previous functional activity level. Using the latest minimally invasive techniques, we endeavor to decrease recovery time and minimize pain. Along with our friendly and dedicated staff, we pride ourselves on treating each patient like family and making them feel comfortable and informed at each stage of the healing process. We look forward to helping you feel better and on the road to recovery.

Source: Azra Care

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