Mar 20
2024
Automation and Digital Tools Help Address Provider Workflow Challenges
Responses by Patty Riskind, CEO, Orbita.
It might be a new year, but healthcare is dealing with old problems:
Too much time spent on administrative tasks. Staff struggling to keep up with high call volumes. Patients waiting too long for care or falling through the cracks altogether. Services delayed or cancelled because patients were not appropriately prepared.
It’s past time for healthcare to adopt workflow automation and patient self-service tools to address these challenges. Other industries embraced these options years ago, documenting better performance and higher satisfaction among staff and consumers.
Where do bottlenecks occur and what solutions are available to improve workflows related to the patient care journey?
Obstacles impede these pathways in two significant ways:
- How patients access information and care. Most consumers want to go online at their own convenience to check symptoms, learn about providers and make appointments. They prefer not to make a phone call – and, candidly, providers seek strategies to reduce call volume too. It’s critical for providers to deliver smart, conversational chatbots and virtual assistants that can be accessed across the web, text, email or voice channels to satisfy patients and alleviate staff workloads.
- How patients navigate an episode of care or procedure. Both patients and staff struggle to complete forms, education and prep steps – in the right order and at the right point of the process – to ensure scheduled services happen in a timely manner. Interactive digital tools guide patients through their journey and give them online options to complete all prerequisites. Dashboards allow staff to monitor patient progress and flag individuals who need one-on-one intervention.
How can these tools support the complex nature of healthcare, as well as ensure the information provided is accurate?
Early generations of chatbots failed healthcare. Rarely did they provide patients the information they needed, resulting in dead ends, inaccurate answers and an unacceptable level of drop-offs.
But today’s virtual assistants and online tools are smarter and more responsive. Developers leverage conversational AI so patients can pose questions in the words and phrases they are comfortable with. Interactive dialogs probe for more details to add context. This means the virtual assistant can zero in on the precise answer the patient is looking for.