Google Cloud forged several partnerships with significant health systems and health plans in the last few years to develop generative AI solutions and tools designed to reduce administrative burden. Their work couldn't come at a better time, as burnout and inefficiencies plague hospitals across the country.
Google surveyed 821 healthcare providers, 209 payers and 2,079 adult consumers about generative AI in healthcare. The survey found:
1. Clinicians spend an average of 28 hours per week on administrative tasks and medical office and claims staff spend 34 to 36 hours per week on administrative responsibilities.
2. Administrative burden contributed to burnout and staff shortages for 82% of the clinician respondents and 81% of medical staff respondents. Around 77% of claims staff also felt burnt out because of administrative tasks.
3. Sixty-eight percent of respondents felt the administrative burden negatively impacted quality of care and 66% of providers were concerned about human error in administrative tasks.
4. Ninety-one percent of providers and 97% of payers reported positive feelings about using generative AI for administrative tasks.
"Healthcare workers have historically faced significant administrative burdens, and this has intensified in recent years due to increased regulatory requirements, complex billing processes, and associated EHR documentation requirements," said Aashima Gupta, global director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud. "But generative AI offers a powerful solution. By automating tasks and streamlining workflows, it supports healthcare experts, ultimately improving medical systems and helping doctors and nurses provide better care."
Hackensack Meridian Health in Edison, N.J., partnered with Google Cloud last year to develop a generative AI tool to streamline administrative tasks. The AI-enabled chat tool powered by Google Gemini large language model summarizes meeting notes, drafts emails and summarizes research.
Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare and Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems also work with Google on generative AI solutions. HCA developed a generative AI-powered nurse handoff tool, which frontline nurses helped design.
"Our nurse handoff tool is transforming the way critical patient information is shared," said Michael Schlosser, MD, senior vice president of care transformation and innovation at HCA. "By streamlining this traditionally tedious manual process, we're not only improving efficiency and communication, but also ensuring that nurses have more time to connect with patients and provide truly personalized care."
Community Health Systems aims to achieve similar results through its partnership with Google Cloud, announced in January. The health system migrated to a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources 1-based clinical data platform and implemented Google Cloud's generative AI technologies to modernize its data infrastructure and streamline workflows.
"By embracing generative AI, we can significantly reduce the administrative burden on our healthcare providers, allowing them to focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality patient care," said Miguel S. Benet, MD, executive vice president of clinical operations at Community Health Systems. "We're particularly excited about how generative AI can automate time-consuming tasks, such as generating personalized patient letters and streamlining clinical documentation. This not only frees up valuable time for our clinicians but also allows us to improve the patient experience."
Google Cloud hopes working with payers will help streamline the claims process and deliver faster payments. Generative AI can accelerate prior authorization and claims processing by pre-populating forms, analyzing forms for issues and suggesting relevant clinical guidelines for submissions. It can also verify eligibility, review medical necessity, and calculate payments, according to Google Cloud's report.
"Imagine: prior authorizations that take seconds instead of days, claims processing streamlined by intelligent automation, and clinicians freed from tedious administrative tasks to focus on what truly matters – patient care," said Tony Farah, MD, executive vice president and chief medical and clinical transformation officer at Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health. "Clinicians are the healthcare experts, and we want to support them with appropriate and actionable insights delivered by best-in-class technology."