Ob Hospitalist Group (OBHG) has been named a winner of Newsweek’s inaugural AI Impact Health Awards in the category of Best Health System AI Transformation. A judging panel of health system executives and clinicians recognized OBHG for deploying autonomous coding, a tool designed to take routine charge entry off clinicians’ plates.
For OB/GYNs and certified nurse-midwives weighing a move to OB hospitalist medicine, the award points to OBHG’s commitment to empowering clinicians who want to focus on patient-centered care instead of administrative red tape.
“Our priority is always to provide high-quality care to the mothers and babies who depend on us,” said Dr. Lisa Bukovac, chief clinical officer at Ob Hospitalist Group. “By thoughtfully integrating AI into our clinical workflows, we’re giving our teams more time to be present for patients during some of the most important moments of their lives. This recognition reinforces our commitment to embracing innovation that supports our clinicians and strengthens the care we deliver.”
“Autonomous medical coding has been eye-opening. It doesn’t replace physicians or what we do. Anything that saves us time so we can focus on patient care is an asset.”
Dr. Jana Thor, OBHG Site Director
Giving time back to the patient
Before autonomous coding, OBHG clinicians entered every professional charge by hand, between patients, on busy labor and delivery units. Manual entry took 8 to 10 minutes per patient. At roughly 15 patients per shift, that added up to more than an hour of clerical work per clinician.
OBHG worked with healthcare technology company Commure to deploy a tool that reads a clinician’s finalized note and drafts the charge, including procedure (CPT) and diagnosis (ICD-10) codes, with a written rationale for each.
The results were impressive from the start. Within the first few months of deployment, AI was generating more than 85% of charges at OBHG’s pilot sites, while clinicians who previously spent 8 to 10 minutes per patient on charge entry now needed only about 90 seconds. In a typical shift, that could mean 1.5 hours returned to each clinician for patient care.
The clinician stays in charge
Nothing goes to billing without a clinician’s sign-off. Clinicians review each draft, read the rationale behind every code, edit or override anything that doesn’t match the care they delivered, and attest before releasing the charge. Incomplete or low-confidence cases are routed for additional review instead of moving on to billing.
“It was never a software initiative. It was a bedside initiative,” says Dr. Mark Simon, OBHG’s chief medical officer.
It didn’t take long for OBHG’s hospitalists – many of whom, like Dr. Jana Thor, were initially skeptical of AI – to embrace the system.
“Autonomous medical coding has been eye-opening,” says Dr. Thor, a site director at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital in California. “It doesn’t replace physicians or what we do. With the shortage we’re facing as clinicians, anything that saves us time so we can focus on patient care is an asset.”
When Dr. Thor remembers her previous workflow, which she describes as “painful,” she echoes the familiar, seemingly endless administrative distractions that siphon precious minutes from patient care in nearly every medical specialty.
“Before you could even get to the coding, you had to manually enter the medical record number, date of birth, patient name,” she says. “Even when your note was detailed and included diagnoses codes, you still had to hunt them down again.”
These days, however, Commure’s proprietary AI has taken over much of that work in a streamlined process that generates the appropriate charge in seconds – happening, as the company says, “as a natural extension of the physician’s documentation workflow.”
Measured before it scales
The success shown at the pilot sites has encouraged OBHG to continue scaling up the program, deliberately and intentionally, with a cross-departmental executive steering committee carefully measuring the output. Expansion moves through formal review gates and audits, and advances only when accuracy and clinical validation criteria are met. The rollout is phased, with plans to reach more than 200 care sites and nearly 2,000 clinicians.
The process is typical of how OBHG makes decisions that affect its clinicians and the mothers and babies they care for. Tools are tested, audited, and governed before they reach the field, and the OB’s judgment stays at the center.
And it’s a process that Dr. Thor is happy to see moving forward.
“I don’t ever see going backwards,” she says. “It’s a game changer for our workflow and practice.”
The work is the patient in the room. The tools should support that.
Explore OBHG openings and see how we do it.