Chatbots, or conversational AI, seem to be everywhere in our daily lives and go-to solutions for digital transformation initiatives. From banks to insurance companies and e-commerce sites, these automated assistants offer help, answer our questions and guide us – often without our really even knowing it. In today’s 24/7 environment, they fulfill the need for always-on service, anytime and anywhere, since it can be a challenge to staff call centers or customer service departments around the clock.
While we’re getting used to chatbots in customer service, there’s an emerging role for them in healthcare – helping to address the COVID-19 crisis.
Knowledge is Power — Easing Public Concerns One Bot at a time
The ability to provide information at a moment’s notice, anytime, anyplace and alleviating the burden on healthcare staff has made chatbots an important tool at Providence St. Joseph Health in Washington State. This health facility treated the first COVID-19 case in the U.S, and it implemented chatbots to help address the public’s demand for information, while at the same time, freeing up their overtaxed healthcare providers from having to deal with a deluge of calls from sick people and the “worried well.”
Providence Saint Joseph Health turned to technology to help it more effectively manage three critical stages of care: triage, testing and treatment, relying on chatbots to particularly assist during the triage phase of the process. By visiting its Coronavirus Assessment Tool online, people can find out more about which symptoms might indicate the virus, and figure out if they should be seen by a health professional. This chatbot is connected to a virtual patient care visit which enables people to discuss their symptoms with a nurse practitioner. It has had overwhelming success with the public; in its first day of use alone, more than 500,000 people used the chatbot.
Chatbots have been able to step up and meet these types of needs because they combine natural language processing with machine learning capabilities. This allows them to understand and communicate in a free flowing, conversational discussion. Because of the benefits it provides, market opportunities for the technology is growing rapidly: the global market for chatbots is predicted to reach $15.7 billion in 2024, up from $4.2 billion in 2019. And the market for chatbots in healthcare is expected to be over 314 million by 2023.
It’s no wonder that conversational AI has a bright future in healthcare. In an industry where professionals are busy and continually strapped for time, chatbots can provide and collect information, conduct outreach, send reminders and schedule appointments. It can also provide support to patients, their families and the public and offers the convenience of meeting consumers wherever they are – whether it’s on their phone, through messaging, social media or elsewhere.
By Drew Ivan, chief product and strategy officer, Lyniate.
It is becoming increasingly popular to move healthcare outside of the clinic and into the community and the home with the use of telemedicine platforms, apps, and other digital means — and the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically accelerated that trend. Counterintuitively, this healthcare crisis has the potential to attenuate the relationship between the patient and the healthcare system, putting provider organizations at increased risk from “digital disruptors” like Amazon, Google and Apple, whose ambitions to take over consumer relationships in healthcare are stronger than ever.
As patients re-orient during the pandemic around other points of care (hospitals, urgent care, pharmacy, etc.), the relationship patients have with their PCPs (which is one of the health system’s biggest and most meaningful advantages against the advancement of healthcare disruptors), can lose value to the consumer. As such, it behooves health systems — who are understandably all hands on deck working to address the COVID-19 crisis today — to be giving serious consideration to ways of fending off digital disruptors as their big challenge in a post-COVID-19 world.
This means focusing on leveraging the unique strengths and assets they have and getting smart about aggregating and using the disparate consumer/patient data sets they manage, to deliver a consumer experience only they can provide.
Digital disruptors excel at delivering exceptional digital customer experiences by using the massive data sets at their disposal that render rich insights into customer trends, needs, behaviors, preferences, proclivities, etc. With that said, hospitals and health systems have an advantage in their exclusive access to patient data and their in-depth medical knowledge.
Health systems need to thoughtfully but aggressively leverage these advantages if they want to successfully retain primacy in the consumer’s healthcare brand relationships. With non-emergent care rapidly shifting to the digital space, digital brands have a golden opportunity to disrupt the traditional patient-health system relationship should provider organizations miss the opportunity to reinforce those relationships by delivering much more personalized digital interactions.
It’s important to remember that healthcare organizations do not need to match the digital sophistication of the big data-driven consumer tech giants. They just need to use what they already know about patients, communities and medicine to create the kinds of experience for patients that only they can.
As hospital leaders aim to protect their organizations from digital disruptors in the post-coronavirus aftermath, these three considerations should be top of mind:
Poor indoor air quality is associated with various short-term health effects, including headaches, dizziness, eye irritation and throat irritation, as well as long-term health complications like heart disease, respiratory diseases and cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
With the average American spending approximately 90 percent of their time indoors, maintaining indoor air quality is an important health concern in all American households, and more so for those with very young children or seniors who are more susceptible to the effects of pollution. As a homeowner, you must constantly take action to get rid of indoor air pollutants like smoke, chemicals, particulates and varnishes, even though you may not see them with the naked eye. Luckily, there are various smart technologies that have been designed to do just that.
Smart air conditioning systems
Smart air conditioners typically use internet and Wi-Fi technology to allow you to control your air conditioning in a variety of ways – whether you’re at home or not. Smart air conditioners are usually mounted to walls and windows and can be operated remotely using a smartphone, tablet or computer. Some smart air conditioners can also be connected to smart home assistants such as Google Home or Alexa for easy voice control. Just like in traditional air conditioners, air filters size measurements vary, and in a smart air conditioning system, this matters a lot. You must ensure that you have an appropriately sized air filter, or else you risk putting a strain on your air conditioning system and pumping dirty air back into your home. Improve air quality with 14×24 air filters. Smoke, pollen, dust, dander, and mold don’t stand a chance against the powerful electrostatic charge of this pleated filter.
Smart sensors
Climate Zone, an air conditioning company from London, points out that there are a lot of things that people can do to improve indoor air quality, but without the relevant data, most remain in the dark about potential dangers in their homes and end up not taking these actions. This is where smart sensors come in: different sensors can provide alerts when pollutant levels become too high inside, allowing the homeowner to take the appropriate action before they start causing adverse health effects.
One of the smart sensors that have become a must-have in every home is the carbon monoxide monitor. Since the poisonous gas is colorless and odorless, the only way to know when you have it in your home is by installing smart carbon monoxide sensors, especially in the kitchen. Once carbon monoxide is detected in your home, the smart sensors can send alerts to your phone or sound an alarm, allowing you to open your windows to get rid of it.
By Catherine O’Leary, RN, managing director, healthcare advisory/CDI, KPMG.
Catherine O’Leary
COVID-19 is imposing a humanitarian and economic toll around the world, and healthcare providers are on the front lines of the response. New COVID-19 medical codes that went into effect on April 1 have an important part in clinical decision making, disease surveillance, population health management and research on the pandemic.
The new codes allow healthcare officials, clinicians, and researchers to capture claims data and use the information to better inform a course of action tied to COVID-19, whether that is for setting aside more beds, creating special units to handle the highly contagious viral infection, routing ambulances to facilities that can handle the emergency or other responses.
Because of the evolving situation, codes are rapidly changing. With every coding update, it is vital for everyone involved in the reporting of claims data, such as coding professionals, clinical documentation improvement specialists, healthcare IT professionals and coding auditors to respond to the changes.
All COVID-19 confirmed cases, documentation of a positive COVID-19 result, or a presumptive positive COVID-19 test result should be coded as U07.1, COVID-19. As a general rule, it is still imperative to follow the Official Coding Guidelines in the selection of principal or first-listed diagnosis (i.e., sepsis, obstetrics, etc.). Furthermore, it is important to report the other conditions/co-morbidities to present the overall severity and risk of mortality of a patient. If a patient presents with signs and symptoms with no definitive diagnosis, there are codes available to capture the reason for the encounter.
This is the guidance that we’re receiving on telehealth:
Services provided do not need to be COVID-19 related and can be offered in all settings, including a patient’s home.
Payers will not enforce the requirement that patients will have an existing relationship with the physician (clinician?) providing telehealth.
Physicians in one state may provide services to patients in another state, but state licensure applies.
Providers will be reimbursed at the same rates as if the service was provided in person.
Telehealth claims should properly reflect the place of service code (02-Telehealth).
With the coding guidance from CDC, the onus is still on healthcare providers to stay informed about the current regulations, as well as potential changes to ensure that COVID-19 encounters are recorded appropriately. Also, the data gathering helps with clinical decision making for quality patient care, disease surveillance, population health management, research and regulatory mandates.
By Rick Halton, vice president, marketing and product, Lumeon.
Since it was first recorded late last year in China, the spread of COVID-19 has accelerated around the world, rapidly creating a global pandemic. The number of new cases is increasing exponentially, putting the western hemisphere in particular on a frightening trajectory, as health systems struggle to battle the virus.
Though billions of individuals around the world are undergoing mandated lockdowns and committing to physical distancing, hospitals continue to be engulfed in an onslaught of COVID-19 patients. One of the most significant impacts of this virus is how rapidly it is overwhelming health systems, consuming critical resources including inpatient beds, intensive care ventilators and importantly, care teams themselves.
Fortunately, technology has incredible potential to help automate and coordinate care communication and tasks. By taking advantage of agile technology platforms, health systems can rapidly deploy new use cases to help deal with the crisis – from early risk identification, screening and patient sign-posting, to helping patients reduce anxiety and self-manage their symptoms.
By leveraging automation, health system leaders can control the curve far more efficiently than ever before. The promise of automation is to ease the COVID-19 burden on staff and resources, giving them the arsenal to fight this disease and ensuring that any future outbreaks never get the chance to evolve from an epidemic to a global pandemic. When it comes to applying automation in the fight against COVID-19, four particular use cases come to mind:
Automated Awareness Campaigns
Tech capabilities that are already prevalent in the public-health sector can also play a critical role in controlling the current pandemic and future outbreaks. For instance, most health systems use Population Health Management (PHM) or Business Intelligence (BI) software that can quickly create and segment cohorts of patients. These solutions can help to identify people and communities at highest risk of COVID-19 complications, based on variables that go beyond the patient’s medical history. Different cohorts with varying degrees of risk can be created, such as the elderly, those with a pre-existing disease including respiratory problems, or those residing in high-risk locations.
Campaigns can then be directed at these cohorts and tailored to address their frequently asked questions or wide-spread myths surrounding COVID-19, as well as advising on how to protect against the virus and self-manage symptoms. Campaigns might also include tips for social distancing or advice about the risk in their specific communities. A critical consideration is how effectively the data can be anonymized with respect to the patient’s consent, along with opt-in/out preferences.
Depending on communication preferences – often found in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system – email, voice and SMS campaigns can be sent out to each cohort. Using these communication tools while targeting specific cohorts of the community can go a long way toward providing reassurance and preventing panic visits to health centers and hospitals.
Automated Screening
Automation technology can also enable more comprehensive screening solutions that proactively assess risk. In this use case, a cohort of vulnerable patients is automatically engaged with a survey that screens for symptoms and, depending on the results from the survey, may then be proactively monitored for the next several weeks. If a patient’s symptoms increase in severity or frequency, they might then be directed to a nearby clinic, with the system automatically generating a list of potential locations based on the patient’s zip code.
This form of automated proactive screening can significantly improve detection of the highly contagious virus and eliminates exposure by allowing doctors to evaluate patients’ symptoms and triage without direct contact. It also limits hospital intake to patients who are most likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19, instead of flooding providers unnecessarily and straining limited resources.
LocumTenens.com asked physicians and advanced practitioners about their experiences with healthcare consolidation as part of its 2019 Compensation and Employment Survey. It can take years to determine success or failure, but one thing is certain: consolidation impacts an organization’s staff and patients.
The results of the survey are insightful. First, 41% of respondents had been employed at an organization where there was a merger or acquisition, and 16% of those respondents were laid off as a result.
Although 42 percent of respondents believe their organization gained access to additional resources, technology or expertise because of consolidation, only 23% reported quality of care has increased, which can be tied back to reduction in staff.
Layoffs often mean remaining providers are seeing more patients than ever. As one internal medicine physician from the northeast wrote, there’s “pressure on doctors to see more patients, [which means] less time for office visits.” This physician, who has been practicing for almost 30 years, was part of an organization that experienced layoffs. Although she was able to keep her position, she plans on making a job change within the next six months.
Unfortunately, the pressure to see more patients can lead to provider burnout and decreased quality of patient care. This is especially true if providers have less face-to-face time with their patients.
One of the motivating factors for consolidation is the desire to launch new or enhance existing service lines. Utilizing locum tenens clinicians in these situations means patients are being seen much sooner than they would if an organization hired new permanent staff members, which can take months or years. Locum tenens providers have worked in a variety of settings, where they’ve picked up best practices that can more readily be incorporated into a newly consolidated organization with a malleable culture. They’re available and ready to work in a pinch, allowing organizations to profit faster.
One troubling statistic that came out of the survey is only 14% of respondents felt valued by the larger organization post consolidation. Lack of feeling valued can also lead to a higher incidence of clinician burnout and hinder the success of the consolidated organization. We explore ways hospital and practice administrators can ensure their healthcare providers continue to feel valued after a merger or acquisition, and ways administrators can demonstrate they place value on the shared culture of the consolidating facilities, on our website.
It was almost 10 years ago that five roadblocks to patient care were defined, including the following:
Cost
Integration of technology
Technology
Organization culture
Relevance
When I look at that list of roadblocks now, I wonder if we can really claim to have overcome any of them. But rather than look at this list as what we haven’t achieved, let’s look at it as an opportunity to improve healthcare for patients, practitioners, and organizations.
There are still clearly issues with the first three roadblocks (cost, integration of technology, and technology). I don’t have to tell you that healthcare payment and reform is a major issue of the U.S. presidential campaign. Looking back at the recent past, even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the beginning of the integration of electronic health records, healthcare probably doesn’t cost appreciably less for patients than it did in 2011.
Still, almost a decade after these roadblocks were identified, many electronic health record systems cannot communicate with other such systems. This communication also does not even begin to consider data privacy protection and the need to meet HIPAA regulations.
However, artificial intelligence, new imaging modalities, better prosthetics, and more illustrate how technology is moving healthcare forward.
The last two roadblocks, organizational culture and relevance, come down to patient communication and what patients want and need. We finally have the technology to help practices communicate with patients in ways that are convenient for the patient, not just the practice. Fortunately, the ways in which practices communicate with patients has evolved significantly over the last decade.
Patient relationship management
Organizational culture and relevance are the two roadblocks where real change may be happening. With the further widespread use of communications technology for patients and evolving patient relationship management software for practices, healthcare practices now have the ability to find out what patients want, what kind of care they require, and how the practice is doing in their eyes.
Did you know that around 7% of patients will find a different healthcare provider if they aren’t satisfied with their care or some other aspect of their experience at an office, including how a practice communicates? If a practice has 2,000 patients, that’s 140 patients that may leave each year. And when those patients leave there is additional time and expense in administration and in marketing — just to stay at the same level the practice was at previously.
Patient relationship management (PRM) software can help a busy practice understand patient satisfaction and build better relationships. As an example, a practice can use its PRM software to develop a short survey for its patients. The practice might want to know about a new provider in the office, the front-desk experience, what new services the practice should consider adding, and more.
Better communication and compliance
An October 2019 report in Medical Economics stated that 83% of practices that used PRM technology said they were able to communicate better with their patients and 81% of practices that used PRM software now had a no-show rate of 10% or less.
What this means for practices may be no less than a revolution in how healthcare is communicated to patients. Patient relationship management software, fully integrated with a practice management system, offers the opportunity to increase patient treatment compliance, increase practice efficiency, and boost a practice’s revenues.
By Chris Plance and Kunal Patrawala, healthcare experts, PA Consulting.
Artificial intelligence tools, such as natural language processing (NLP), can be applied to unstructured data to produce real-time and nuanced insights. NLP can be applied to many types of unstructured data in a provider setting, however, the ideal approach is to apply these tools to a non-clinical source of unstructured data first.
Non-clinical unstructured data provides organizations with a perfect platform to develop their skills. Two well-known sources of such non-clinical unstructured data are consumer assessment of healthcare providers and systems (CAHPS) and hospital consumer assessment of healthcare providers and systems (HCAHPS) surveys. Applying NLP to CAHPS and HCAHPS surveys can help providers improve their top-box scores, build confidence and capabilities in their data skills, increase revenue, and allow organizations to take the crucial first steps towards the journey of unlocking 100% of their data.
CAHPS and HCAHPS Surveys play an important role in today’s Healthcare environment and are a substantial source of structured and unstructured data
Similarly, private payers are also tying these metrics to reimbursement. The advent of healthcare consumerism has also led to patients extensively using tools such as CMS’s Star Ratings to make informed decisions. As a result, CAHPS and HCAHPS surveys have downstream effects on reimbursement, star ratings, and brand loyalty which makes improving top-box CAHPS and HCAHPS scores vital to a provider’s financial and operational health.
CAHPS and HCAHPS contain both structured (numerical ratings) and unstructured data (patient comments). These patient comments are accessible, and approximately 50% of the patients who take HCAHPS surveys leave comments. Unlocking this unstructured data can provide more comprehensive and specific information that cannot be gauged from only structured numerical ratings.
Chatbots, or conversational AI, seem to be everywhere in our daily lives and go-to solutions for digital transformation initiatives. From banks to insurance companies and e-commerce sites, these automated assistants offer help, answer our questions and guide us – often without our really even knowing it. In today’s 24/7 environment, they fulfill the need for always-on service, anytime and anywhere, since it can be a challenge to staff call centers or customer service departments around the clock.
It is becoming increasingly popular to move healthcare outside of the clinic and into the community and the home with the use of telemedicine platforms, apps, and other digital means — and the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically accelerated that trend. Counterintuitively, this healthcare crisis has the potential to attenuate the relationship between the patient and the healthcare system, putting provider organizations at increased risk from “digital disruptors” like Amazon, Google and Apple, whose ambitions to take over consumer relationships in healthcare are stronger than ever.
Poor indoor air quality is associated with various short-term health effects, including headaches, dizziness, eye irritation and throat irritation, as well as long-term health complications like heart disease, respiratory diseases and cancer, 
Since it was first recorded late last year in China, the spread of COVID-19 has accelerated around the world, rapidly creating a global pandemic. The number of new cases is increasing exponentially, putting the western hemisphere in particular on a frightening trajectory, as health systems struggle to battle the virus.
LocumTenens.com asked physicians and advanced practitioners about their experiences with healthcare consolidation as part of its 2019 Compensation and Employment Survey. It can take years to determine success or failure, but one thing is certain: consolidation impacts an organization’s staff and patients.
By Chris Plance and Kunal Patrawala, healthcare experts,