Improved Care Coordination with AI and Automation
By Jonathan Shoemaker
Every day, healthcare organizations from across the spectrum are proving their resilience. With many in the industry confronted with inflation, labor shortages, employee burnout, and other operating challenges, they nonetheless persevere and make the best of a difficult business environment.
Many of the same barriers are likely to remain for the foreseeable future. Forward-looking healthcare organizations will respond to these obstacles by exploring new technologies that fill workforce and operating gaps, while also offering the potential to reduce long-term costs. Specifically, providers will increasingly look to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to drive operational efficiencies, improve care coordination and patient flow, relieve workers’ stress, enable staff to work at the top of their licenses, and enhance patient engagement.
Safer AI to drive greater efficiency
Healthcare delivery will largely be shaped by two important factors: first, the continued rise of AI and automation, and second, purpose-built innovation aimed at easing care transitions. Others will surely disagree, but I believe we are still at least several years away from the point at which AI will meaningfully impact clinical care. However, one significant area where AI can move the needle today is driving greater operational efficiencies. We can accomplish this by focusing AI innovation on tools that streamline workflows, coordinate data and communication across care settings, and support effective care transitions across the patient journey.
At the same time, while the federal government seeks to regulate safe and ethical AI practices in healthcare, it will be essential to ensure that the processes we measure in relation to AI do, in fact, drive better health outcomes for patients. By creating responsible regulation that at the same time promotes innovation and technological advancement, we can ensure that AI reaches its potential to create better outcomes while in tandem maintaining high safety and ethical standards.
The right time to reimagine patient flow
In what is a bit of a double-edged sword for health systems, demand for care will undoubtedly continue to rise, straining their already-overtaxed resources. To adjust to this new reality, health systems must reimagine patient flow by more effectively analyzing and improving demand, capacity, and throughput with improved care coordination across disparate settings.
By employing a holistic approach to patient flow, health systems can create operational scale while also triggering improved resource utilization and enhanced patient outcomes. To accomplish these ambitious goals, health systems will rely on technology and AI that proactively guides each patient to the optimal care setting, as opposed to the previous approach of manually reacting to each patient transition. When care boundaries are limitless, providers can promote better care access at each step of the patient journey, ultimately generating healthier patient outcomes.
Enabling providers to work at the top of their licenses
One looming challenge for health systems revolves around how to overcome technological and cultural siloes that have creeped up within their organizations over the years. Doing so leads to improved care orchestration, which relieves staff burnout by enabling team members to work at the top of their licenses. To improve care orchestration, providers must employ technology to convene disparate data, reduce waste and inefficiencies, and enable global visibility into their operations. This automation not only streamlines administrative tasks, allowing providers to focus on top-of-license clinical work, but also fosters best practices and ensures uniformity in data and processes, which in turn drives improvements in the quality and accessibility of care.
Patient engagement as a differentiator
Patient engagement, and technology that enhances it, will increasingly emerge as the next generation of competitive differentiation for health systems. As a result, health systems will adopt solutions that improve population health by driving greater access and health equity. Technology providers will increasingly work closely with health systems to help them communicate with patients about the value their solutions drive across care networks through better interoperability, automation, and AI that improve the care experience for patients.
Additionally, health systems will continue to examine how virtual care fits into their overall delivery models and how it can enhance patient engagement. This will involve analyzing their workflow, staffing, logistics, reimbursement, and technologies with an eye towards pulling them all together into a more cohesive strategy. Further, health systems will seek to redesign their workflows and operational processes to better leverage virtual care for the right patient at the right time, while also developing strong consumer-facing strategies, like retailers, to better engage patients.
While a look into healthcare’s crystal ball always comes with uncertainty, it’s a safe bet that healthcare organizations will continue to innovate to overcome whatever barriers may arise. Embrace the challenge!
Jonathan Shoemaker joined ABOUT in 2023 as Chief Executive Officer, bringing more than 25 years of health system and information systems experience with a proven track record of transforming and delivering initiatives and solutions that improve healthcare delivery, operations, and growth.