GPT-4 In Healthcare: Paperwork Shedder

Tarapong Sreenuch
5 min readJun 23, 2023

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Introduction

The healthcare industry is facing a significant challenge with the amount of paperwork that doctors and nurses have to deal with. This paperwork is causing them to feel stressed and burnt out, which is affecting their ability to provide quality care. A recent survey found that paperwork is the second biggest cause of burnout, after not having enough staff. Although paperwork is important for keeping track of patient care and following government rules, there is just too much of it for healthcare professionals to handle. Ideally, we want our doctors and nurses to be able to focus on providing great care and spending more time with their patients. One potential solution to this problem is the use of GPT-4, an advanced language model that can be used in various ways to improve healthcare delivery.

Patient Intake Form

As a patient, filling out a long and tedious paper form with your personal information and medical history can be frustrating. However, imagine if you could skip that step and instead have a conversation with an intelligent computer system that asks you questions one at a time to gather all the necessary information. That’s where GPT-4 comes in.

GPT-4 can be used for patient intake, where it can ask patients questions about their basic information, current health condition, medications, past medical history, family history, smoking history, and alcohol consumption. Patients can answer each question in a conversational manner, just like they would with a human. Once the interaction is complete, GPT-4 can summarize the patient intake data, which can save time and reduce errors associated with manual data entry. It also offers a more interactive and engaging experience for patients, which can be less cumbersome than filling out a paper form. GPT-4 is an intelligent and efficient approach to patient intake that benefits both patients and healthcare providers.

Medical Encounter Note

GPT-4 can help doctors create accurate and efficient medical encounter notes. It works by analyzing the conversation between the doctor and patient and generating SOAP — Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan — notes of the encounter. This helps doctors save time and reduce the risk of errors in documentation.

GPT-4 can also suggest standardized codes for billing and disease identification, which can be challenging for doctors to select. With over 10,000 CPT codes and 70,000 ICD-10 codes, it can be challenging for doctors to select the right codes. GPT-4 can help doctors avoid errors and ensure that the correct codes are used for reimbursement claims. Although GPT-4 may miss some codes, it is still a valuable tool for doctors. It can save between 15 and 30 minutes of documentation time, even with the few minutes it takes to verify its accuracy.

Doctors can also use a second instance of GPT-4 to check over the work and suggest improvements. In addition to generating accurate medical encounter notes, GPT-4 can also help doctors track changes over time for example vital sign values and oxygenation levels. It can also specify the type of cardiac stress test ordered by the clinician and include the date of the encounter for better timeline tracking. GPT-4 is a valuable tool for doctors to improve the accuracy and efficiency of their medical encounter notes, ultimately leading to better patient care.

Quality Improvements

GPT-4 can help doctors provide better care for patients by giving them feedback on how they did during the visit and suggest ways they can improve for next time. GPT-4 can also provide patients with additional resources, like brochures or instructions, to help them manage their health better. After the visit, GPT-4 can help doctors write a summary of what was discussed. This summary can be written in a way that’s easy to understand and encouraging. If patients need the summary in a different language, GPT-4 can do that too. By handling administrative tasks, doctors can spend more time with patients. This means they can focus on providing quality care and following up with patients, rather than just seeing as many patients as possible in a day. GPT-4 would help doctors provide better care for patients by giving them feedback, providing resources, and freeing up time for more direct engagement with patients.

Business End of Healthcare Delivery

The healthcare system can be complicated, with lots of rules and paperwork that doctors have to deal with. But GPT-4 can help make things easier! For example, when doctors need to get approval from insurance companies for certain tests or treatments, it can be a real headache. Every insurance company has different forms and procedures, and it can take a lot of time to fill everything out correctly. But with GPT-4, doctors can just tell the program what they need, and it will write the justification text for them in less than a minute! GPT-4 can also help doctors with medical data coding, which is important for sharing information between different healthcare systems. Instead of having to use lots of different apps for different formats, GPT-4 can convert data into the format needed. GPT-4 is a tool for doctors who want to manage the complexity of the healthcare system and be more productive.

Future Potential

GPT-4 has the potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery in the future. For example, it could be used to analyze large amounts of patient data to identify patterns and trends that could help doctors make better diagnoses and treatment decisions. It could also be used to develop personalized treatment plans for patients based on their unique medical history and genetic makeup. GPT-4 could also be used to develop virtual assistants that can help patients manage their health and provide them with personalized recommendations for diet, exercise, and other lifestyle factors. The possibilities are endless, and as GPT-4 continues to evolve, it will likely become an even more valuable tool for healthcare providers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, GPT-4 has the potential to transform healthcare delivery by reducing administrative burden, improving documentation accuracy, and freeing up time for doctors to focus on patient care. It can be used for patient intake, medical encounter notes, quality improvements, and the business end of healthcare delivery. As GPT-4 continues to evolve, it will likely become an even more valuable tool for healthcare providers, with the potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery in the future. While some may worry about the impact of technology on jobs, we should focus on the benefits that GPT-4 can bring to the healthcare industry and ultimately to patients. By embracing new tools and technologies, we can improve health outcomes and make the healthcare system more efficient and effective.

#chatgpt #healthcare #paperwork #generativeai #medicine #gpt4

Ref: Lee, P., C. Goldberg & I. Kohane. The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond, Peason Education, 2023.

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