Highlights
75%
less time spent on documentation
10 – 45 minutes
freed up per therapy note
Overview
RELUCENT PSYCHOLOGY GROUP is a mental health group practice that offers counseling and therapy services in person in the Bay Area and virtually across California. Founded in 2019, the practice employs 10 providers, including clinical psychologists, social workers, and licensed therapists and offers mental health care for couples, children and teens, covering challenges ranging from depression and anxiety to substance use disorder and complex trauma.
Telehealth services are key to Relucent’s success, driving greater access to care, reduced no-show rates, and a high rate of patient satisfaction. Indeed, all of Relucent’s providers offer virtual therapy and nearly half exclusively offer online care.
But telehealth is no silver bullet when it comes to administrative burden, and virtual care still carries many of the same documentation requirements as in-person care.
Along with draining providers’ time and practice resources, the excessive documentation burden placed on providers saps them of mental energy and forces them to divide their attention between their notes and the patient in front of them. This not only fuels burnout, but also risks alienating patients.
To tackle this problem, Relucent turned to Verbal’s HIPAA-compliant, AI-powered clinical documentation tools.
Relucent’s providers estimate Verbal’s AI-powered call summaries and therapy notes have cut the time it takes to document client calls by 75 percent while freeing up much-needed mental energy.
Client
Relucent Psychology Group
Scope
10 providers, including clinical psychologists, therapists and social workers
Key features
- Developed custom note generation model based on provider feedback and collaboration
Faster documentation, higher quality
To streamline documentation at Relucent while ensuring AI-generated notes met the organization’s quality and compliance standards, Verbal worked closely with providers to understand the clinical note formats they required as well as the subtle differences between different providers’ counseling and therapy practices.
Verbal also collaborated with providers on multiple rounds of testing, quality assurance, feedback and revision to ensure AI-generated notes met the team’s standards.
Based on this context, the Verbal AI has been able to consistently generate high quality drafts of clinical notes as soon as a Relucent therapy session ends.
Relucent’s providers need only install a two-click Google Chrome extension and the Verbal AI will automatically capture and analyze call audio via their browser, with no need for complex integrations with communication providers.
Verbal is HIPAA compliant and on track for HITRUST certification, which boasts some of the most comprehensive security frameworks in the healthcare industry and ensures patient data is protected with the highest standards of privacy.
”“It's a really huge win to have a summary already established for you...And, honestly, we've all agreed that sometimes the summary is even better than we would have been able to write [ourselves].”
Dr. Shereen MohsenClinical Psychologist, Relucent Psychology Group owner
Providers can immediately review Verbal-generated notes and accept them as is or make edits before saving and transferring to an electronic health record. That said, notes have typically required minimal edits, says Dr. Shereen Mohsen, Relucent’s owner and a practicing clinical psychologist.
“Any edits that need to be made are pretty minor,” says Dr. Mohsen. “The mental energy that you have to put into the editing is significantly less than if I were to actually have to write the note from scratch.”
Verbal also generates a highly accurate transcript and audio recording of each conversation, allowing providers to easily review specific moments in the session and add additional quotes or context to their note as needed.
Cindy Stava, a virtual-only Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor at Relucent, notes that this translates to real time saved.
“I love it because the summary comes up fairly quickly, I can take a quick look at it add to it if I need to, and then I'm done for the day, versus before it was over an hour of extra time to do everything, sometimes even up to two hours.”
Cindy Stava, LPCC, CSAT`Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor
BEFORE VERBAL
AFTER VERBAL
Tangible time savings
Considering how notoriously time-consuming clinical documentation can be – with research suggesting providers spend 35 percent to 50 percent of their time on documentation – tools that reduce this burden even slightly can be a tremendous help when it comes to patient access and provider satisfaction.
But Verbal has proven even more effective than Relucent’s providers expected.
Relucent providers estimate they spent at least 15 minutes per patient or up to two hours per day on therapy notes before using Verbal. This documentation fell to just five minutes per note on average after they started using Verbal.
“If it’s taking 10 to 15 minutes to write [a note] from scratch,” Dr. Mohsen says, Verbal allows Relucent’s providers to spend “maybe five minutes, max.”
The time savings are even more apparent in certain contexts, such as when documenting complex trauma, says Stava.
“It takes me 15 minutes at the most. If I wasn’t using Verbal, it would take me over an hour, absolutely.”
Much-needed mental energy
Along with giving them hours of extra time back each week, Relucent’s providers say Verbal has reduced their stress and freed up their mental energy to be more present with patients.
Thanks to Verbal, Relucent’s providers no longer need to divide their attention between a conversation and note taking. This is all the more important when tackling especially sensitive topics like abuse and complex trauma.
“There isn’t as much concern in the midst of sessions about ‘Let me jot this down’ or ‘Let me make sure I remember this,’” says Dr. Mohsen. “It frees up time and it frees up mental energy… Some of my staff are seeing 20 or more patients per week, so being able to save them that 10 or 15 minutes per session where they don’t have to actually put in that mental energy and take that time is a huge win.”
“Essentially you’re always in the middle of something intense, especially in my type of work…and [the client is] saying something incredibly important and they’re very emotional about it,” says Stava. “Having something like this is so nice because I don’t have to worry so much.”
While a boost in mental energy is difficult to quantify, it’s clear Verbal has had an impact on provider satisfaction at Relucent.
“My providers are finding it really, really helpful when they’re feeling swamped by the paperwork, when they feel burdened by all of the demands of the job,” says Dr. Mohsen. “This is one area that they don’t have to worry about as much and don’t have to exert as much mental energy. It’s been a huge weight lifted off of them.”
What's next?
Thanks to Verbal’s AI-generated documentation, Relucent Psychology Group and its providers have more time and mental energy to see additional patients, be more present with patients and enjoy a better work-life balance.
While some providers were skeptical at the prospect of AI in mental health, Verbal has won them over.
“When I first heard about AI entering the mental health space, I was very anti,” says Dr. Mohsen. “But when I see how AI can actually enhance and support a therapist’s role and make things that feel cumbersome a lot more efficient, that’s when I can really get on board.”
Now, Relucent is working closely with Verbal to further refine its AI-generated documentation and is exploring new product features that could make their work even more efficient, effective and fulfilling.
”“At the end of the day, it's just so nice to be done.”
Cindy Stava, LPCC, CSATLicensed Professional Clinical Counselor
