Juggling the administrative business of a complex healthcare system with administering patient care is an undeniable challenge. Healthcare professionals, such as nurses, feel that daily in their roles. The juggling act is increasingly driving reports of burnout and opening discussions around how administrative tasks and expectations have changed within our healthcare system.
Coming out of the 2020 pandemic, there were high levels of reported burnout across healthcare professionals (as reported by a 2022 USA Today and Ipsos poll). At the time, about half of healthcare workers who responded to the poll reported feeling “burned out,” and nearly a quarter reported that they were likely to leave the healthcare field entirely in the near future.
More recently, the increased need to provide additional documentation, respond to patient communication, and coordinate with pharmacies and insurance providers has impacted the daily duties of nurses and other healthcare practitioners. Specifically, there’s decreased time for providing clinical patient care when growing administrative needs demand time and attention.
As a result, doctors are more frequently charging fees for tasks like signing patient documents and answering emails. According to one Washington Post article, the University of Washington explained in a June blog post for patients that billing had been initiated for doctor administration time because the 500,000 emails their doctors received in 2019 had skyrocketed to 1.4 million in 2022.
To combat burnout, healthcare leaders need to first have tools to identify what is causing burnout. AI is one opportunity to sort through a deluge of conversation data and present findings that highlight the realities facing the healthcare workforce and enable productive next steps in activating training, process development, and organizational support.
More and more of this includes navigating a complicated and cumbersome system of enrollment forms, prior authorization, refills, and care coordination. The American healthcare industry was created from a core desire to care for the health and well-being of people. While the size and scope of that mission has grown and evolved, that core purpose remains the same as new challenges emerge on how to best prioritize health outcomes and care. Leveraging unstructured data (such as recorded patient conversations) with AI will give leaders better insight into what’s actually happening in their patients’ and employees’ experiences.
Harness the Power of Conversations with AI
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a tool healthcare organizations can use to mitigate feelings of administrative burnout and optimize medical professionals’ time by identifying and monitoring the top reasons for patient outreach, redirecting administrative strain and effectively deploying resources.
Conversation data offers a clear path to listen to both patients and healthcare professionals in an impactful way to uncover why and where administrative burnout is emerging. Only then can organizational, systematic change occur to optimize time and improve coordination of care.
Commonly, doctors’ offices receive high volumes of communication because healthcare professionals are viewed as both medical practitioners and healthcare administrators — and patients are looking for quick answers inside a complex environment.
Ways AI Reduces Administrative Burden in Healthcare
Healthcare professionals’ time is valuable and finite, so there is enormous benefit to assessing and optimizing the best use of their time and attention. Conversation data can help enhance the patient experience and provide relief against burnout as healthcare professionals manage various administrative requests and tasks alongside patient care. AI can be implemented to help:
Re-evaluate current communication drivers: A critical first step in re-evaluating processes is understanding what is triggering communication in the first place. In understanding what questions are being asked, what tasks are most recurring, and where delays are happening health systems can respond and automate new processess or messaging. AI can analyze and summarize high volumes of conversations and report on topic, frequency, and where time is being spent to help reduce the manual work required in executing on administrative tasks.
Invest in automation and digital innovation: Daily, there’s a lot of data being recorded and captured from calls, chats, emails and texts. AI can be implemented as a tool to help automate or streamline processes and procedures in place. Popularly, Generative AI is helping to summarize information in seconds so that action steps needed can be rapidly responded to.
Focus on administering patient care: AI can be a tool to help optimize time and resources so that focus remains on patient care. For example, last year, 83% of analyzed conversations containing the Eddy Effect involved a process disruption. By understanding current sources of friction or most frequent inquiries being made, AI can be an important tool to monitor progress over time, redirect support as needed, and help strategically focus process improvement and support needs.
Conversation data can show the challenges healthcare professionals are facing, pinpoint sources of stress and burnout, and guide in efficiently prioritizing their time and resources. By embracing AI as a valuable tool for improving and enhancing administrative processes, doctors and healthcare leaders gain valuable insights to optimize their operations and deliver the best possible outcomes for their patients. This approach can help them move forward with confidence and create a more positive experience for the organization, their staff, and their patients.
About Amy Brown
Amy Brown is the founder and CEO of Authenticx – the software platform that analyzes and activates patients’ voices at scale to reveal transformational opportunities in healthcare.
Amy built her career as a rising executive in the healthcare industry, during which time she advocated for underserved populations, led and mobilized teams to expand healthcare coverage to thousands of Indiana residents, and learned the nuance of corporate operations.
In 2018, Amy decided to leverage her decades of industry experience to tackle healthcare through technology. She founded Authenticx with the mission to bring the authentic voice of the patient into the boardroom and increase positive healthcare outcomes.