AI and Automation in Healthcare: Cutting Costs and Reducing Staff Burnout

  • Written by Ashley Mark
  • Tuesday 17th October 2023
AI and Automation in Healthcare: Cutting Costs and Reducing Staff Burnout VLMS Healthcare

Artificial intelligence and automation are dominating the world with various advantages. The foremost advantage of AI and automation is that it trims down multiple unnecessary costs and expenses in healthcare. Despite artificial intelligence and automation's benefits and positive impacts, investing in these technologies is still a reason for dilemmas and risks. This is because the technology is new. However, when denial rates increase, healthcare staff is short, and payers are transforming their operations with AI, the merger of artificial intelligence and automation in healthcare operations becomes necessary. AI and automation help streamline business processes by helping healthcare providers to increase efficiency and minimize manual work. 

AI and automation streamline healthcare revenue cycle management

The first and foremost responsibility of healthcare leaders is to maintain the financial stability and health of the organization. After all, cash flow is essential to run hospitals with which the revenue cycle runs. There is an untouched potential to use AI to enhance financial prospects by automating manual administrative processes. Various tasks are tedious and require tremendous time to manage data already collected. The management and organization of such unstructured data is a mess, but with AI and automation, this task is simplified to improve efficiency and accuracy. 

Automation is a tried-and-true method for reducing human tasks, improving productivity, and producing data for better decision-making. AI goes one step further in this. AI systems may analyze a business's data to find and forecast trends in the behavior of payers. It transforms this data into insights that aid providers in increasing profitability and enhancing the experience of both employees and patients.

Cost is the biggest challenge in the implementation of AI and automation

Despite the potential benefits, healthcare still lags behind other industries in adopting AI; staff expenses are the most significant obstacle to adoption. In the healthcare industry, it's essential to keep the technology or solution updated annually with talent and put it into use. Organizations will need to hire staff with AI skills.

Although providers may find it difficult to pay staff members with this skill set competitive compensation, there are alternative approaches to address cost problems. One such is working with a dependable third-party vendor to select the ideal AI solution for their firm. To assist providers in delivering innovative models of care, these vendors may use economies of scale, data, and lessons gained from other markets.

Providers must ensure that the team finds benefits of AI and automation

Providers must ensure that employees recognize the advantages that this technology may offer. Additionally, they need to guarantee that they receive the appropriate instruction on using these talents. They don't replace your work; instead, they help you do more or free up your time so you can concentrate on doing the right thing rather than the right thing that requires their particular area of expertise.

The approach uses a two-pronged strategy to support employees in minimizing claim denials and maximizing reimbursement:

AI Advantage - Predictive denials combine real-time and historical payer decisions with claim data to identify claims most likely to be rejected. Staff can then intervene and make the necessary changes before submission.

Similar work is done by AI Advantage - Denial triage for claims that are ultimately rejected. Directing employees toward resubmissions that are most likely to be paid helps reduce the amount of time spent on low-value rejections.

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