Primary care has become one of the most stressed corners of American medicine. Patients are living longer with chronic illnesses that demand constant management, yet physicians are in short supply and burning out at high rates. At Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham, about 15,000 patients who once had a primary care provider in the system no longer do.
“It’s really hard to meet the primary care needs of our patients,” Ron Walls, MD, COO of Mass General Brigham, told Becker’s. “And when you have people with chronic diseases who have a lot of things to adjust and manage and a need for frequent access, and the access is compromised because of a shortage of providers — that’s not a good formula.”
Faced with that gap, the health system is introducing Care Connect, a service that gives patients around-the-clock access to virtual primary care through an artificial intelligence platform developed with New York City-based K Health.
Dr. Walls said the goal is to improve access while supporting physicians.
“We wanted to deal with the chronic burnout that’s been occurring in primary care, not just in our system but across the country,” he said. “Our providers are pretty excited about this.”
Here’s how it works: Patients begin by speaking with an AI program that collects information about their symptoms and organizes it for a physician. The patient is then connected with a doctor virtually or directed to an in-person appointment.
“It’s remarkably real, by the way—like you would never know you’re not talking to a person,” Dr. Walls said. By the time the physician sees the patient, the intake is already complete, making the visit faster and more focused.
But Dr. Walls stressed that the technology is meant to supplement, not replace, traditional care.
“Right now, what we want to do is use AI to improve our responsiveness to patients, improve the information that we gather and how we use that information and improve our care,” he said. “We’re still very much a live physician model.”
The system will measure success in two ways: whether more patients are attached to a primary care provider and whether outcomes improve for those with chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
“If we could check in on them in their home, if we can check how their blood pressure is doing or how their diabetes is doing, for example, and we can stay in close contact with them along the way, we can manage their disease not only much better, but it’s much more convenient and easier for them,” Dr. Walls said.
Mass General Brigham is not alone in experimenting with this model. Other leading health systems, including Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, Paramus, N.J.- based Hackensack Meridian and Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, have partnered with K Health as well. Dr. Walls said the effort is about finding balance: allowing physicians to focus on the most complex cases while giving patients quicker entry points into care.
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