A neurosurgeon's best friend: Reducing stress and improving patient care with Heidi

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Background

Dr. Gordan Grahovac is a Consultant Adult Neurosurgeon and Complex Spine Neurosurgeon at King’s College Hospital and in private practices in London Clinic and Kent. He specialises in complex spinal surgeries, minimally invasive procedures in the management of spinal canal stenosis, spondilolisthesis, lumbar and cervical disc herniations, spinal tumours, fractures, CSF leaks, thoracic disc herniations, and fractures. Dr. Grahovac’s focus is on delivering excellent patient care while managing a high-volume practice. However, the burden of detailed documentation often detracted from his time with patients and created mental fatigue.

Challenges

Before adopting Heidi, Dr. Grahovac faced significant challenges that made it harder to focus on his patients’ needs.

Time-consuming documentation

Writing detailed, accurate operation notes for complex procedures was tedious, especially when dealing with multiple levels in spinal surgeries. The process was slow and required significant effort after each consultation.

Cognitive load

The constant mental effort to recall all details from patient consultations added to an already stressful workload. Dr. Grahovac was finding it difficult to juggle the demands of complex surgeries with the need for flawless documentation.

Solution

Dr. Grahovac turned to Heidi Health to alleviate these challenges, to be able to allocate more time for patient consultations, and to capture true and more detailed patient clinical history. Heidi’s custom templates and ambient listening features were key to improving his efficiency.

Dr. Grahovac’s favourite Heidi features:

• Ambient listening: Heidi’s ambient listening feature allowed Dr. Grahovac to save time between consultations without needing to take notes manually or look at a computer screen, enabling him to stay fully engaged with his patients during consultations.
• Customisable templates: Dr. Grahovac now saves time by generating detailed, accurate operation notes quickly and easily, which can be converted into patient letters, referrals and discharge letters with a click of a button.

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Impact

The introduction of Heidi Health has had a profound impact on Dr. Grahovac’s practice, with improvements in efficiency, secretary load, quicker turnover of the letters and patient care.

"I save one hour not doing dictations after clinical appointments in busy clinic mornings just from Heidi alone. It’s amazing to think of all the time I’m saving with these tools." 

“I’m more relaxed because of Heidi. It means I can see more patients and don’t need to rush between consultations or worry I will forget something the patient said. At the end of the day I don’t get tired. You can’t really quantify it but it reduces psychological burden from the clinician. There’s no need for paper to document.”

Key outcomes: 

• Saved up to 1 hour per clinic session thanks to Heidi’s ambient listening and custom templates.
• Reduced cognitive load, allowing Dr. Grahovac to focus more on patient interactions.
• Improved the quality and accuracy of documentation, reducing rework.
• Improves turnover of the letters and referrals due to removing the need of typing the letters from dictation. 

Regaining time

By using Heidi’s templates and ambient listening, Dr. Grahovac has saved up to one hour per clinic session. This time savings allows him to be more focused on the patients without feeling burnout and allows for smoother running of the clinic. 

Cognitive load reduction

By automating much of the documentation, Heidi helped reduce the cognitive load on Dr. Grahovac, allowing him to focus more on patient interactions and clinical decision-making.

"The cognitive load has been reduced drastically. I don’t need to worry about recalling every single detail during a consultation or remembering all the information to document later. Heidi does it in the background, so I can concentrate on my patients." 

Improved documentation quality

The use of Heidi’s templates has allowed Dr. Grahovac to generate more detailed and accurate operation notes much faster than manually dictating each one, improving the overall quality of the documentation.

"The quality of my documentation has improved significantly, and my patients notice. They feel reassured that everything has been documented properly."

Unexpected benefit

With less time spent on documentation, Dr. Grahovac is more present with his patients. He no longer needs to worry about missing important details or interrupting the consultation to take notes, enhancing the quality of his interactions with patients.

"Patients ask me ‘When will I receive my letter?’ I say that it’s already done" 

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What’s next

Dr. Grahovac plans to continue expanding Heidi's use across both his NHS and private practice. He is particularly excited about further developing templates for complex spinal cases and exploring ways to implement Heidi in his ward rounds to improve the documentation and reduce the workload of junior doctors. 

"Heidi is my best friend. It makes my work so much easier, and I can truly focus on my patients rather than on the stress of documentation." 

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