In the world of post-acute healthcare, where increasingly complicated payor requirements, shifting patient expectations and ever-tightening government priorities have immense impact on businesses with mostly limited resources, owners and operators are seeking solutions that offer the most bang for their buck. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as a low-cost, highly effective tool one should consider adding to the cache to improve clinical outcomes, optimize employee efficiency and create a better experience for both caregivers and patients.
In the first webinar featured as part of Forcura’s Summit Series, panelists discussed three use cases involving AI as a care predictor, care planner and care extender.
Sharon Brunecz, Chief Human Resources Officer, AmedisysSharon helped her home healthcare services company develop an application that provides care staffing predictions based on a variety of data captured through employee surveys, exit interviews and individual performances measured against business results. The in-house creation, reflecting approximately 21,000 employees in more than 40 states, began in 2018 as a simple Excel spreadsheet to use in combatting a high employee turnover rate. Eventually, more than 200 inputs from 20 data sources were incorporated into an automated platform, and an initial interface that required frequent management feedback was reimagined as a simple advisory message. Leaders now receive periodic Human Resources emails that inform them of any team members who exhibit high risk for leaving the organization and approaches they may take to intervene. In 2019, the turnover rate at Amedisys was approaching 20%; as of Q1 in 2021, it had been reduced to less than 16%.
Wes Little, Chief Analytics Officer, WellSky
Knowing the emphasis that is increasingly being placed on provable value and efficiency in healthcare, Wes and his team at the EMR company tapped into data stored in more than 5 million home health episodes in their system to inform Home Health CareInsights, a care planning solution they launched in late 2019. The technology can connect to any EMR system and give caregivers predictive health analytics to identify patients at risk for a hospitalization or re-admission, as well as help providers manage their patient care in the most efficient and effective way possible. By “learning” with every new note entered into a patient’s chart, CareInsights analyzes and adjusts its predictions as needed not only to an individual’s record, but to the entire population being served in a network. With such determinations occurring in real-time, providers can have the latest data at their fingertips to decide if they need to intervene or modify their care plan. Even with a pandemic wreaking havoc on the industry in 2020, Wes said WellSky clients who have adopted the technology were able to reduce their hospitalization rates by more than 8%, while at the same time reducing their total amount of utilization by 21%.
Wolf Shlagman, Founder and Chief Product and Innovation Officer, Care Angel
In 2016, Wolf established Care Angel as a care-extending enterprise solution for population health, risk stratification, quality care, and performance measure improvement. With healthcare organizations unable to support the cost and logistics of manually tracking lower-acuity but pricey chronic conditions that can lead to critical episodes if not managed well, the Care Angel simulated nursing assistant offers continuous, proactive engagement at scale to gather timely, actionable data and keep the most vulnerable patients adhering to care plans. While this cost-effective solution, administered through a simple phone call, is meant to help people take better care of their health in the comfort of their homes, it can be deployed in other settings. Wolf said during the pandemic, even some of the largest healthcare organizations had the means to reach out to only 15% of their patient populations. With Care Angel, these proactive check-ins reached 100% due to fully automated assistance.
Q & As
Q: What has been the employee response to your application at Amedisys
A (Sharon): Leadership values it because it provides data they can use to run the business better, in an easy-to-use format. The broad workforce isn’t really aware that it exists, but it is not being kept hidden from them, either. The technology is used to capture data points; how they are interpreted and used is still in the hands of human analysts, which is an important distinction.
Q: Will AI help post-acute care providers succeed in the evolving value-based care landscape?
A (Wes): The opportunity in front of care providers has never been more unlimited. Technology and AI are not the solutions to every problem, but if they can help teams extend further into the community, extend their impact to more patients and improve the care they provide, it can be a huge advantage because it offers better outcomes with lower costs – and that is what value-based care is all about.
Q: Do you encounter a hurdle as you're proposing Care Angel to a new client about the use of artificial intelligence being patient-facing; can it do as good a job? How do you overcome that kind of resistance?
A (Wolf): From a provider’s perspective, this technology is simply an addition to the team, but one that is available 24/7, is pandemic-proof and gets results. Most people today, even the senior population, are also accustomed to automated services in their lives already, such as Alexa and Siri. In the end, patients just want to feel cared for, and providers want to deliver the best possible care. These calls are gathering information that providers see and can use to make corrective decisions, so we really don’t encounter issues when it is explained in this way.
Q: With a growing population comprised of rising acuities, coupled with staffing issues and getting enough qualified people in the right places within the industry, can healthcare providers afford not to have technologies such as AI anymore?
A (Wolf): Technology as an underlying, foundational layer is going to be able to do a lot of the work that humans can only address by a fraction, and since providers now need to care for a lot more people, a lot more often, in a value-based world, there is going to be a lot more risk if you're not using supplemental technology.
Q: Where should providers begin to get their hands around this technology, if they're not doing it already?
A (Wes): First understand the business problems that you want to solve, because no matter how powerful an AI engine, no matter how intuitive a solution, if it doesn't solve a top business challenge for your organization, it's likely not worth the time to use it to its fullest capability. Then you really need your staff to buy into why this is going to be a real benefit to them; speak to the mission that you have as a post-acute care provider. Your mission can be accelerated through using solutions like these, whether it is to better take care of your own employees or better care for your patients.
To hear more from our panel about the use of AI for care prediction, planning and extension, access the webinar and enjoy the discussion.
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Robert is a Senior Content Writer at Forcura with extensive knowledge of the healthcare industry. He develops thoughtful and provocative information for administrators and caregivers in the post-acute market. |
