The Robin is Helping Doctors and Patients See Eye-to-Eye Again

By Patricia Salber MD, MBA (@docweighsin)

Robin Healthcare is replacing clunky approaches to medical visit documentation allowing doctors to once again concentrate on what their patients have to say.

Robin Healthcare’s co-founder, Noah Auerhahn, says the company is “problem obsessed.” This is what makes it different from other young healthcare companies that all too often start with a focus on technology first (e.g., “let’s do something cool with Alexa”). The problem the Robin team wants to solve is big and it’s important: the documentation burden that is contributing to inefficient and costly care as well as to the now pervasive issue of physician burnout.

The documentation problem

According to an article published on the website Physicians Practice, there is not much formal research linking EHR use and burnout, however it quotes the deputy chief health officer at IBM Watson Health, Paul DeChant MD, as stating that.

“…there is data that shows for every hour physicians are directly with a patient, they are spending two hours doing administrative work. Many physicians are spending one to two hours at home working in the EHR — known as pajama time.”