Improving the efficiency of patient care administration with AI and automation

Improving administrative efficiencies with automation and AI, Part 1

For decades, technology has been used to help better manage the day-to-day operations of hospice and home health providers. But in an industry that still relies largely on manual documentation, that technology is too often underutilized. New advances are changing this, leveraging AI and automation to help organizations in the important goal of improving the efficiency of patient care administration.

Leaders who embrace these opportunities could soon have the power to expand their clinical workforce without a corresponding increase in administrative staff. But companies that fail to leverage these tools could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage at a time when that can have serious consequences.

Welcome to Part 1 in our new series on how home and hospice leaders can leverage AI and automation to optimize administrative processes and improve the efficiency of patient care administration. And don’t forget to join us for Part 2, when we discuss how this powerful technology can improve clinical documentation in ways that benefit your patients and your bottom line.

How do AI and automation help improve operational efficiencies?

So, what’s the secret to leveraging AI to get the most from the technology that now underlies most aspects of care delivery, from EHR and scheduling to claims processing and more? And how can AI help you grow your business without also having to expand your back-office or administrative staff?

At its most fundamental level, AI is about helping you to automate as much as you can, where you can. After making sure that data and users are where they need to be to make important decisions, many other processes can—and should be—automated. Used in this way, AI can be a tool for improving the efficiency of patient care administration by automating aspects of scheduling, supply management, external communications, clinician assessments, and more.

This has the potential to not just save your team considerable hours of administrative work, but it can also help you avoid miscommunications, errors, and oversights. The result in both cases is the smoother, more successful running of your organization. Here are a few specific ways AI and automation combine to make that possible.

Improving the efficiency of patient care administration with smarter forms and instant alerts

With the clinician in the field, AI efficiency comes from smart assessments, speech-to-text, and automation. For your back-office workers, the rules are essentially the same, but with some key differences—it’s more like clinical documentation on a macro scale.

For example, the process followed by most organizations’ intake teams are often slow and cumbersome. Rather than having to wait for information, the admission packet should instead be sent out to the patient and the caregiver automatically and securely. The patient should be notified immediately—another task that can be automated for greater efficiency and reliability, and even varied according to the preferences and responsiveness of the patient.

AI can also help accommodate changes in supply management with far fewer bottlenecks or missed orders. Technology to enable vendors, platforms, and providers to import all ordered supplies into your EHR for cost and claims reporting has been around since the early 2000s. But those systems need to be constantly revisited because new factors are always coming into play—as we’ve seen very dramatically in the PPE shortages caused by the pandemic.

AI that can detect anomalies and ensure smooth operation has become essential in an industry where time is of the essence. For example, MatrixCare software is engineered to ensure that no imported supply orders need human intervention. If an unfamiliar item is found, the creation and onboarding of that new item is assessed and automated in the moment. In most cases, this means that no action is required from a worker; if it is, the action then fixes the problem, improving the efficiency of patient care administration for that item on a permanent basis.

Join us for Part 2: Improving clinical documentation

There’s more to improving administrative efficiencies with automation and AI. Next time, we’ll explore the groundbreaking improvements in clinical documentation enabled by the applied use of this technology, and how those improvements can further fuel operational efficiency and give you the info you need to improve outcomes.

Learn how we can help your facility achieve administrative efficiencies with AI.