The VA Provider Digital Health (DHC) Committee meets regularly; members work to identify Cerner changes that would be most helpful to providers. VPSA provides sessional funding to the physician representatives on the committee for time spent in meetings and doing other committee work. On the agenda for the September meeting: AI Scribe, tokens, a Dialpad update, and the communication project.

AI Scribe

The Oracle AI Scribe pilot is showing moderate success with provider satisfaction around 60 per cent. Feedback has been shared with Oracle, which has resulted in product improvements and enhancements that will arrive in Q3. Participants are not being added to the pilot to allow for consistent evaluation data.

Tokens update

Work is underway to simplify and standardize medication tokens/templates for clinical documentation. The focus is on improving document readability. Additional details are being defined before technical teams build templates.

Dialpad update

Microsoft Teams Phone was discussed as a potential communication tool for staff; this offers phone-calling capabilities within Teams. Committee members agreed that Teams is suitable for routine communications but is not a replacement for critical clinical workflows such as Code Blue alerts.

Future communication improvements will depend on medical staff interest, organizational prioritization, and available funding.

Communication project

On-call information is spread over multiple locations and there is no one-stop place to find out who is on call. Providers, trainees, and hospital staff are using multiple communication platforms (e.g., pagers, phones, texts, WhatsApp, Signal, and Teams).

There was broad agreement among committee members that a standardized, easy-to-navigate on-call directory would be a valuable first step.

Next Meeting

The committee meets again on October 14. If you have an item you wish to be brought forward at one of these meetings, please contact Laura Mc Evoy, Manager, Provider Strategic Initiatives & Engagement at VCH.