AI-driven automation and workflow optimization to ease pressures on staff were major themes during an executive roundtable sponsored by RevSpring at Becker's 9th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Conference.
The roundtable discussion was led by Kristen Jacobsen, vice president of marketing and omnichannel engagement at RevSpring.
Three key takeaways were:
- Healthcare staffing challenges impact the revenue cycle in myriad ways.
During the roundtable, participants identified staffing issues as a major contributor to reduced quality of care, patient dissatisfaction, decreased efficiency and productivity and other factors.
From a revenue cycle management perspective, delays in claims processing, coding, billing, finalizing payments and answering patient queries are closely associated with staffing challenges. While many healthcare organizations are applying new technology to address these challenges, there are limitations. The current generation of chatbots, for example, is not yet advanced enough to handle complex queries and issues.
But continued innovation is crucial to overcoming RCM challenges and empowering healthcare teams to leverage their strengths and enhance the patient journey.
"We need our patient-facing staff to focus on the things where they're most effective, so they can support patient interaction that actually needs to happen," Ms. Jacobsen said.
- Automation lets staff focus on what's most important — the patient experience.
Specifically in RCM workflows, automation can help with tasks that include claim scrubbing, eligibility verification, prior authorization and coding.
Leveraging automation in these ways allows healthcare organizations to collect extensive data and can help in risk assessment, as well as provide predictive analytics for data-driven decision-making.
Because this data can drive more informed decision-making and staff are freed up to work on tasks directly impacting the patient, automation is a key component in improving patient care. Patients might also directly feel the benefits by having access to self-service portals and more personalized communication.
Last but not least, automation can help to identify possible fraud and flag any compliance or regulatory issues.
- Chatbots can provide valuable information to employees.
While automation can enable staff members to focus on higher-level tasks, healthcare leaders are keeping a careful eye on changes that inadvertently add burden or contribute to burnout. Some are looking into automation that serves up information to help employees more quickly and easily resolve questions.
The use of chatbots can help organizations with information flow and allow staff to access an array of data right at their fingertips. While staff are increasing their focus on patients, the burden of having to search for information can be significantly decreased through automation.
"We're building a predictive knowledge base that, based on the keyword used in a conversation, automatically pushes forward knowledge to answer a question," one roundtable attendee said.