Healthcare AI assistant company Suki announced its expansion into 12 new hospitals. The hospitals are all customers of electronic health record company Meditech, which signed Suki as its first AI assistant offering last year.
Meditech is the third most popular EHR vendor, with 879 installs and a market share of nearly 13%, according to a 2023 article by Definitive Healthcare. Suki and Meditech made a deal in late 2023 to integrate Suki’s AI assistant into Meditech Expanse, the latest web-based version of its EHR.
The two new customers Suki announced Thursday are St. Mary's Healthcare, a hospital in upstate New York, and Decatur County Memorial Hospital in central Indiana. Both hospitals serve communities of less than 20,000 people and have been using Suki’s AI voice assistant for months.
According to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2023, rural Americans tend to be older, sicker and have less health insurance coverage. Lower provider reimbursement in rural areas can also cause financial distress and impact access to care, GAO found.
Due to rural hospital closures in the last decade, rural Americans are having to travel 18 miles further on average to receive care, the government watchdog wrote.
“They are the center of gravity for those [communities] and where you come to get your healthcare,” Michael Maus, chief revenue officer of Suki, said. “So if you live in Clinton, Missouri as an example, you're going to Golden Valley. It's not like you have five other health systems that you can choose from.” Suki has partnered with Golden Valley, which is also a user of Meditech's EHR.
Meditech’s customer base are mostly smaller practices, often rural, with 50 to 200 beds, Maus said.
As the challenges for rural healthcare providers pile up, an AI assistant is even more valuable, Maus stressed. Natasha Struewing, a nurse practitioner at Decatur County Hospital, shared her experience in a statement.
“Suki has helped me not only complete my documentation more quickly, it has also improved the detail of what is captured in my notes,” Struewing said. “As a critical access hospital, the number of patients who seek care on any given day can vary widely. With Suki, I can see more acute patients and provide the care they need in a timely fashion, which is essential in achieving the best outcomes possible. I feel fortunate to be part of an organization that recognizes and invests in solutions that meaningfully impact both clinician and patient experience.”
Offering Suki is also a way for Meditech to continue competing with other EHR giants that offer AI solutions through their EHRs, Maus noted.
“Because of our partnership with Meditech that was announced in the fall of last year, Meditech clients were like, ‘There's a partnership there. The EHR that we trust says, ‘Hey, that's the first one we want to do business with.’ Let's go have a conversation'," Maus said.
Many Suki customers come on referral because the ambient note-taking assistant saves time for providers and improves operational efficiency, he noted. Maus also said that smaller hospitals tend to connect them with hospitals in neighboring communities.
Julie Demaree, St. Mary’s Hospital's executive director of clinical innovation and transformation, explained the impact Suki has had on their business.
“St. Mary’s is committed to providing the best possible experience for our clinicians and patients alike. Ambient listening has demonstrated it can help us achieve both these goals - our clinicians who use Suki tell us not only are they experiencing significantly less administrative burden, they are able to engage with their patients in a deeper way,” Demaree said. "We are very pleased to make Suki accessible across our organization so clinicians and patients can experience these benefits."