Why home and hospice leaders are turning to AI workflow transformation
Already faced with challenges like workforce shortages and heightened competition, the pandemic has only intensified the biggest issues facing home health and hospice providers and the private duty agencies that work with them. But thanks to the power of AI workflow transformation, businesses looking to shore up operational efficiencies have new tools to do so.
AI workflow transformation—or the operational optimization that’s enabled by artificial intelligence—isn’t new. However, recent breakthroughs have dramatically enhanced its scope. New applications of this technology, such as those long supported by MatrixCare, have also boosted the power of AI to facilitate faster, more accurate workflows.
One way it accomplishes this is by the automatic capturing, digitization, and organization of verbal notes taken by clinicians in the field. Even better, the technology also flags important words relating to patient medications, allergies, or other critical data, instantly prioritizing that note and making sure it’s front and center for other workers providing care to that patient.
AI-enabled workflows also help providers make better use of often-outdated fax technology, upon which many physicians still largely depend. Like it or not, communicating by fax is still embedded in care delivery. Instead of trying to get experienced physicians to abandon the fax, AI can instead be leveraged to improve its accuracy and usefulness.
How AI workflow transformation enables a faster response to critical issues
Here’s how it works: AI tech enables the capturing of voice-to-text data from clinicians and care providers taking notes (in the patient’s home, in a facility, or wherever care is provided). If the clinician identifies a significant change with the patient, they can use the dictation or speech recognition integration to quickly put that information into the system.
When dictating their notes, clinicians can also flag or emphasize other key items like diagnoses, medications, allergies, and other data that can immediately impact patient care. And the receiving physician or attendant can then easily extract the information that’s most pertinent to the patient’s current status.
Upon its conversion to text, the data is then electronically faxed to the primary physician’s EHR system using a compatible cloud communications service, and then prioritized by urgency or importance. And even if a certain incident is not flagged by the clinician, the AI can identify terms in the faxed report that most urgently apply to patient care.
Better bridging the gap between fax and modern technology
As mentioned, a major advantage of AI workflow transformation for care providers is helping to make the best use of a rapidly aging, but still foundational, technology: the fax. The fact of the matter is, as much as those of use working to optimize care would like the fax to become a thing of the past, it’s probably here to stay for now.
AI-enabled workflows don’t require physicians to give up using fax technology. To the contrary, AI can actually enable providers to do a lot more with a limited and outdated system. For instance, AI can not only extract and highlight pertinent data from a fax, but also give care providers the power to search contextually within that information.
Even better, the technology can also organize data in more efficient ways. By combining NLP and OCR capabilities with advanced AI and learning, the system can identify key data points that may be related within a series of notes, even if they don’t share a keyword. That could mean the ability to quickly find medications—as well as medication allergies.
By transforming the pertinent data into an electronic PDF, the needs to comply with fax technology are met while also providing a more structured, usable, accessible document to be referenced by other clinicians and EHR systems. And when it comes to red-flag issues, that urgency and accessibility could have an enormous impact.
That’s just the beginning. Think of the advances to come in the next decade, as AI-automated workflows continue to evolve. For organizations looking to make the most of the technology they already have while getting more value from current workflows, AI is a powerful opportunity to get data to the right place, at the right time, for the best patient care.
Chris Pugliese is a Senior Product Manager of Integration and Interoperability for MatrixCare. Chris has spent the last decade working with post-acute technology and EMRs, and the last 5 years focused on interoperability. His strength is enabling technology, as well as educating on the growing importance of interoperability and its benefits to the post-acute care settings. In a short time, Chris has become a leader, spearheading integration and interoperability initiatives within and outside of MatrixCare. Recent industry committee roles and responsibilities include: Leadership Team Member for the Post Acute Interoperability Work Group (PACIO), Technical Lead for the Functional Status Subgroup for the PACIO initiative – developing FHIR Profiles for Functional Status, CommonWell Health Alliance Use Case Committee member, CommonWell Health Alliance Specification Workgroup member
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