How healthcare AI can maximize resource deployment

What’s trending: AI applications can help alleviate unnecessary burdens for the workforce ?

In the face of mounting workforce and care capacity challenges, healthcare organizations can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) tools for better staff deployment. These applications can help allocate resources, alleviate unnecessary burdens, and increase capacity for patient care and interactions.??

Health systems recognize this opportunity: One-quarter say they have an active AI program, and another 42% say they are piloting AI, according to a new survey .?

Why it matters:?

AI tools can help both clinical and administrative staff focus on higher-quality activities, freeing up time and improving both patient and workforce experience.??

During a recent roundtable discussion , panelists highlighted where AI tools can start to make a difference.?

1. Reduce the cognitive burden for clinicians. Organizations can leverage AI to synthesize medical records and assist with clinical documentation. Lower-risk applications can surface and visualize relevant patient insights from the volumes of historical patient data in discharge summaries, longitudinal records, and previous clinical notes.

“We frequently hear from clinicians how much time is not patient facing,” said Julie Massey, MD , Partner and Leader, Clinical Technology Innovation practice at Chartis. “AI applications could reduce the clinician burden and help them tell the patient’s clinical story rather than spending their time as data-entry clerks." ? ?

2. Optimize resource deployment for service center staff. Health systems can use AI applications to generate high-quality call summaries from live voice interactions and create unique structured data in the enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) platform. ? ?

“Proactively generating real-time prompts for the agent—based on what the health system knows about the patient—can guide the agent to ask the right questions and take the next best action,” said Jon Freedman , Partner and Leader, Digital Consumer Experience practice at Chartis. “Even cutting just a few seconds off each phone call can add up to a lot of savings and increased satisfaction for the staff and patients.”? ?

3. Automate internal processes to enhance consumer experience. For interactions like patient inquiries, AI tools can leverage voice-to-text natural language processing to learn and categorize. They can help inform why patients are calling. They can also help predict when patients are going to call, whom they are going to call, and whether they’ll get the answers they’re seeking. The organization can then make sure calls are going to the right places and being serviced by the right resources.? ?

“So many consumer interactions live in the ether of ‘calls,’” said Tom Kiesau , Chief Innovation Officer and Leader, Digital & Technology Transformation at Chartis. “A majority are going to unstructured endpoints like physicians’ offices. This means a huge aspect of the clinical workforce is doing manual, administrative work that health system leaders have no insight into.”? ?

4. Predict and match patient demand. In the not-too-distant future, organizations will be able to use AI to identify patient demand trends in real-time by combining live service center data with electronic health record (EHR) data, community or population trends, and other data channels, such as current consumer search information.??

“Even beyond predictable demands like flu spikes and holiday-related build-up in the emergency department, organizations can identify when and how patients will seek care, then proactively deploy staff, tools, and other resources to meet that demand,” said Bret Anderson , Partner, Digital & Technology Transformation at Chartis.?

What’s next??

For healthcare organizations to effectively utilize AI tools for resource deployment, panelists shared the following recommendations:?

1. Establish clear and trusted workflows. Data and outputs must be reliable and trusted. For that to happen, organizations need to ensure data validity and lack of bias . They also need to establish the workflow around each tool. They need to first define what they want people to do with the output and then build the systems to enable their efforts. ? ?

“For instance, if clinicians are using diagnostic screening tools, they need to trust the findings and know what to do with the results, not just duplicate effort with a redundant exam or manual verification of the event,” said Massey.? ?

2. Ensure new tools don’t create new challenges. Organizations need to strike the right balance of enabling higher productivity without creating unsustainable workloads. Gains in provider productivity will be counterproductive if they lead to higher rates of burnout, for instance. Organizations also need to view their efficiency gains end-to-end to avoid shifting the bottleneck or burnout to other functions or people. End users need to trust that the organization is positioning AI to support them in tackling their workload rather than adding to it. ? ?

“The key is treating AI as an engagement tool,” said Anderson. “It shouldn’t be something you do to your staff but something you do with your team.” ? ?

3. Prepare for operational model changes. Realizing the benefit of AI tools requires considering the corresponding risks and needed changes. This includes legal considerations, as well as consumer, patient, and staff comfort level and engagement. ? ?

“Tools won’t achieve anything on their own,” said Kiesau. “You need to put them in people’s hands in a way they can use and collaborate with them.”?

With careful planning and collaboration, leaders can use AI tools to better engage and deploy their workforce. Doing so can create capacity, reduce cost, and create a better experience for the workforce and patients alike.?

Explore the full seven-part roundtable series, “AI in real time ,” for more insights.

ABOUT CHARTIS

The challenges facing US healthcare are longstanding and all too familiar. We are Chartis, and we believe in better. We work with more than 900 clients annually to develop and activate transformative strategies, operating models, and organizational enterprises that make US healthcare more affordable, accessible, safe, and human. With more than 1,000 professionals, we help providers, payers, technology innovators, retail companies, and investors create and embrace solutions that tangibly and materially reshape healthcare for the better. Our family of brands—Chartis, Jarrard, Greeley, and HealthScape Advisors—is 100% focused on healthcare and each has a longstanding commitment to helping transform healthcare in big and small ways. Learn more .

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