Transforming specialties with eClinicalWorks AI-powered innovations

Specialty care is a vital component of a patient’s overall healthcare journey, requiring close collaboration between providers. More than one-third of patients in the US are referred to a specialist each year.¹ A pioneer in electronic health records (EHR) and health IT solutions, eClinicalWorks provides specialty care providers with AI innovations that streamline operations and improve patient interactions.

Catering to the unique workflows of specialty practices

While more routine medical services like primary care or family medicine have historically been relatively straightforward to integrate with new EHR tech tools, the nature of specialty care operations often requires unique clinical documentation and workflows. For example, behavioral health providers must manage various forms of documentation, including third-party screening forms, treatment task tracking, care plan reviews and patient and care team signoffs.

To ensure continuity of health data collection and interoperability across the electronic health record ecosystem, eClinicalWorks has prioritized delivering customized tools for providers in specialty areas such as pediatrics, dermatology, neurology, cardiology and more. Recently, the company introduced new modules and features for oncology, nephrology and physiotherapy to the EHR, with even more specialties in the pipeline. With the addition of these modules, specialty care providers no longer need to adopt additional third-party solutions to achieve their EHR needs.

Beyond driving operational efficiencies for specialty practices, AI tools can improve the quality of healthcare delivery. For instance, Health Opportunities for the People of East Texas (HOPE) found that adopting a new AI medical scribe, Sunoh.ai, that captures real-time patient notes during behavioral health appointments allows providers to “maintain eye contact and observe body language during patient interactions, fostering deeper connection and trust” between the patient and doctor.² Tools like the eClinicalWorks AI Assistant for PRISMA further enhance documentation review and interoperability by providing concise highlights of a patient’s complete medical history from all credible health system sources. 

Ensuring reliable care for all patients

With ongoing staffing shortages, it has become increasingly difficult for specialty care practices to manage patient volumes. Notably, The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projects staffing shortages of 82,000+ in allied health services and 404,000+ in behavioral health services by 2037.³ Bridging these gaps requires specialty care providers to embrace AI innovations to manage patient volumes and ensure optimal care delivery.

For the Community Health Alliance, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) that offers various services, including dentistry in Nevada, ensuring a dental assistant is always present to complete charting at the time of appointment poses substantial staffing issues.⁴ However, by adopting the Sunoh.ai medical scribe, their dentists can complete exams on their own using voice commands, freeing up dental assistants for other essential tasks. eClinicalWorks and healow are trusted by over 850 health centers nationwide due to the AI-powered solutions that meet these organizations’ unique needs.⁵

Women’s health is another specialty care area leveraging Sunoh.ai to enhance patient interactions and streamline doctors’ notes. Rocky Mountain Women’s Clinic reports saving approximately two hours daily by using the AI-powered medical scribing software and enhancing its focus on patient interactions.⁶ AI medical scribes are bridging gaps in documentation and improving patient experiences across specialties. 

AI-powered contact centers such as healow Genie are another innovative healthcare technology that will improve care delivery at specialty provider offices. This innovative technology is designed to ensure patients have 24/7 access to their health information and to help specialty care providers manage call volumes. It will eliminate call hold times, provide patients with timely responses to their inquiries in their natural language and escalate them to on-call providers when needed. Pulmonary and Sleep of Tampa Bay has selected healow Genie to screen the more than 500 calls it receives per day.⁷ The AI medical receptionist technology will ensure reliable and timely inputs to patient queries, including managing bill payments, scheduling appointments and more.

Improving payment outcomes to drive practice growth

Specialty care services significantly reduce hospitalization and mortality rates, ultimately driving cost savings for the broader healthcare ecosystem.⁸ To ensure that specialty care services remain widely available, it’s crucial that these offices receive payments in a timely manner. Payment solutions such as healow Pay™ and healow Statements are poised to meet this need, enabling specialty care practices to expedite patient payments and boost revenue.

For example, the Neurology Center of New England, the largest neurological care center in Massachusetts, adopted the eClinicalWorks Image AI Assistant to automate the management of faxes and healow Pay and healow Statements to streamline its payments, witnessing game-changing results that ensure the practice can continue to meet the state’s comprehensive neurology needs from diagnosis to long-term care.⁹ The neurology center saw a 156% surge in all patient payments in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Additionally, the practice has reported that the eClinicalWorks Image AI Assistant has significantly improved fax management for the practice, swiftly matching faxed documents to the appropriate patient record.

Specialty care providers are crucial to positive health outcomes for patients. Arming specialty care practices with AI innovations designed to meet their unique operational needs drives efficiency and increases revenues while boosting patient interaction quality. eClinicalWorks is revolutionizing the paradigm for intra-medical specialty collaboration by streamlining data management and payment processes, boosting patient health outcomes in the near term and ensuring long-term survival for these critical specialty practices.

References:

1. Schuldt, R. and Jinnett, K. December 5, 2024. Barriers accessing specialty care in the United States: A patient perspective. BMC Health Services Research 24.
2. eClinicalWorks. eClinicalWorks and Sunoh.ai empower behavioral health counselors at FQHC to foster deeper patient interactions. Press release, April 24, 2025.
3. Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Health Workforce. November 2024. Health workforce projections.
4. eClinicalWorks. eClinicalWorks announces integration of Sunoh.ai for dental clinics nationwide. Press release, May 9, 2024.
5. eClinicalWorks. Helping the nation’s health centers serve every community.
6. eClinicalWorks. Sunoh.ai saves OB/GYN practice 2+ hours daily on documentation and facilitates growth.
7. eClinicalWorks. eClinicalWorks and healow Genie to transform patient communication at Pulmonary and Sleep of Tampa Bay. Press release, May 13, 2025.
8. Schuldt and Jinnett, Barriers accessing specialty care in the United States.
9. eClinicalWorks. May 8, 2025. Neurology Center of New England witnesses over 156% increase in patient payments with eClinicalWorks and healow payment services.