Healthcare organizations face many challenges. After the pandemic and an uncertain economy, many facets of the healthcare industry have changed forever. Staying ahead of the competition requires embracing digital transformation, as well as AI-driven technology that can help providers become more efficient, more accurate, and more empathetic to patients.
In our new white paper, The Patient Engagement Revolution in HealthcareWe look at five trends that will impact healthcare organizations in 2024 and beyond, and how AI can help alleviate the pressures hospitals, health networks and other healthcare providers face Today.
1. The consumerization of healthcare is transforming patient expectations
Healthcare services are being consumed rapidly, driven in part by investments from major technology providers and retail pharmacies ranging from Amazon has CVS. This gives patients a wide variety of options if they are unhappy with the care they receive today. At the same time, traditional healthcare providers must up their game and improve patient experienceor risk losing customers to the more convenient alternative.
Conversational intelligence can help healthcare organizations understand their patients' experience, beating out surveys like Press Ganey or CAHPS for value-based reimbursement. Today, patients can express themselves through many channels, from doctor review sites to social media to conversations they have through patient access centers. Monitoring and analyzing these customer interactions at scale can help healthcare providers understand where to make critical improvements to the patient experience.
2. Pandemic digital trends like telehealth are becoming permanent
Some technological advances popularized during the pandemic, such as telehealth, have become a modern convenience for patients. Whether they can't get to their primary care provider for a routine visit or prefer telehealth, many consumers don't want to see these services disappear.
Healthcare organizations can embrace the desire for telehealth while improving patient outcomes. AI, particularly in conversational intelligence or patient feedback analysis, can be used to improve telehealth quality or quality measures in categories outlined by the National Quality Forum – Access to Care , financial impact, patient/provider experience and treatment effectiveness.
3. Economic slowdown worsens bad debt crisis
The bad debt crisis in hospitals and health networks is real. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation Report, about 4 in 10 American adults report having medical or dental debt, or about 100 million adults. Many expect it will take years to pay off this debt, and about 1 in 5 people say they don't expect to ever be able to pay it all off. Service providers left behind due to bad debts often cannot be reimbursed.
The practice of revenue cycle management (RCM) can become much more effective, accurate and efficient through the use of conversational intelligence technology. Conversational Intelligence monitors 100% of omnichannel conversations to improve their efficiency and effectiveness, identifying patient patterns, improving billing accuracy, reducing friction and improving the patient experience.
4. Increasing government regulations drive a need for transparency
Regulations such as Law without surprises And Hospital Price Transparency Act are pressuring healthcare providers and health plans to increase price transparency for consumers. To address these challenges, providers must implement standardized, repeatable systems to help consumers understand and resolve potential billing issues. It is important to scale these systems not only for patient experience, but also for regulatory compliance purposes.
Automate some quality assurance (QA) These tasks can help alleviate these and other large-scale regulatory compliance issues. Most contact centers can only manually evaluate less than 2% of conversations. This leaves a large margin for error when it comes to compliance and quality assurance. Instead, monitoring 100% of patient interactions and supplementing conversational intelligence with human touch can ensure nothing falls through the cracks when it comes to compliance and patient experience.
5. Persistent staff shortages and burnout put emphasis on employee experience
A shortage of clinicians and contact center workers has forced many healthcare organizations to consider other staffing options, such as contract staffing. However, many of these options drive up costs significantly. As an example, for a hospital in New Orleansnon-agency labor costs have increased by just under 60% since 2019, while contract staff costs have increased by almost 900%.
To address burnout challenges and retain employees, it is essential to take steps to analyze the voice of the employee (VoE). To achieve this effectively, organizational leaders – whether HR managers or department supervisors – can survey employees and collect unsolicited employee feedback from various channels, including meetings with managers and supervisors, employer review sites like Glassdoor, and even social media.
Capturing this valuable data at scale can help leaders uncover and act on potential problems and areas for improvement.
Dig deeper into each of these trendsand discover practical applications of AI that can alleviate some of the biggest challenges healthcare organizations face today.