How AI & Automation are slashing costs and elevating patient outcomes (with real life use cases).
Spending more time with patients and less time on admin tasks.
Did you know that in 2022, over 50% of US hospitals generated an operating loss, making it the most difficult financial year since the start of the pandemic?(1) Much of this is due to stagnant or falling revenues combined with higher operating costs.
How can this be? According to PWC, the global healthcare industry processes over 30 billion transactions each year, with an estimated cost of over $250 billion. (2) And the reason for this high expense is that many of these transactions are processed manually.
As well as squeezing operating margins and profits, this hurts the quality of patient care. When more money is spent on administrative tasks, there is less available to invest in facilities, equipment, staff and patient services.
In this series of Newsletters, we will be looking at how a growing number of healthcare organisations are harnessing the power of AI and Intelligent Automation to enhance the productivity and availability of their healthcare professionals, freeing them from manual, resource-intensive tasks and enabling them to spend more time delivering medical care.
Whilst the potential of AI and Automation to transform healthcare is well documented, we will be focusing on the practical applications already making an huge impact on patient care globally, with real use-cases we’ve worked on in healthcare organisations.
Increased speed and reduced risks for Pharmaceutical Prescriptions.
In this first Newsletter, let’s look at an area that cuts across global healthcare provision, that of dispensing prescriptions. Physicians and nurses can spend hours completing and administering prescriptions. Which means less time spent with patients.
We worked with an organisation that was experiencing unnecessary delays in prescription refills for patients due to the time needed for physicians to manually complete and administer prescription documentation. We developed an intelligent solution with them that combines machine learning and AI to automatically access a patient's clinical profile, find if a disposition is needed and fulfil the refill authorisation request, whilst creating a note of the refill in the patient profile.
The result? Patients receive the right medication at the point of need, whilst the healthcare provider benefits from substantially reduced administrative time and near 100% accuracy, freeing up physicians and nurses to focus on patient care. Our client benefits from millions of dollars saved each year and the return of tens of thousands of hours to their pharmacist teams.
An area that requires careful risk management to prevent abuse is that of prescribing opioids. The process can involve multiple manual checks by physicians and pharmacologists to ensure opioids can safely be dispensed to patients. We’ve helped an organisation to dramatically reduce the time it takes to issue opioid drugs by automatically reviewing patient clinical profiles and drug histories to advise pharmacists on any potential risks with dispensing opioids.
The required multi-point check previously took 15 minutes or longer per prescription, whilst the automated solution requires less than 30 seconds. As well as reducing risk and improving patient safety, the solution is saving tens of thousands of hours in administration time, with a reduction in annual costs of several million dollars per year.
Over this series of Newsletters, we will be exploring many areas key to healthcare provision, from ambulatory through to transitional care, as well as operational areas such as resourcing and revenue cycle management. To make sure you don’t miss the series, click Subscribe to be alerted of future editions.
Virtual Operations in Healthcare
We work closely with healthcare organisations globally, helping them to improve productivity, reduce risk, save lives and create lasting value. We are experts at integrating automation and AI tools with major healthcare systems such as Epic, HR Connect, Meditech, Cerner and Salesforce. We don't just advise and implement - we are with you through every step of the digital transformation journey as your organisation grows and diversifies, delivering post-launch end-to-end support and maintenance.
Get in touch for a 30-minute discussion about AI and intelligent automation: https://calendly.com/virtualoperations/intelligent-automation-ai-consultation