There is little doubt that the top challenge facing healthcare in 2022 is staffing. Healthcare organizations around the country are feeling the effects of shortages and workforce instability with both frontline workers and administrative staff. Ironically, organizations are looking to artificial intelligence to help with the situation – a technology once loathed because of fears of job loss.
Growing Crisis
Two years of built-up stress from the COVID pandemic coupled with the Great Resignation, is leading to staffing shortages at healthcare organizations across the country. Every day there are more headlines about the challenges hiring and retaining doctors, nurses, technicians and other frontline staff. The challenge even extends to administrative and support staff in healthcare.
At the recent HIMSS22 and ViVE2022 conferences, there were dozens of sessions on the topic of staffing. It also seemed to be on the lips of every attendee with many lamenting the lack of qualified candidates for open roles.
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and Health and Human Services, on March 30th:
- 5% of hospitals in the US (255) reported a critical staffing shortage that day
- 15% of hospitals in the US (800) anticipated a critical staffing shortage within a week
With these stark numbers, it is not surprising that healthcare organizations are looking for any solutions that can offer relief…including technologies that they were wary of not so long ago.
Artificial Intelligence
Before the pandemic, there were concerns about artificial intelligence (AI). Some were skeptical the technology could deliver on its promises while others were worried that AI would take jobs away. With the staffing crisis, however, these concerns have, for the most part, evaporated. Now AI is seen as way to provide relief for beleaguered staff.
“People were initially a little afraid of automation and AI,” said Greg Goodale, VP of Marketing at CorroHealth who sat down with Healthcare IT Today at HIMSS22 to discuss AI, automation and Revenue Cycle Management. “Now with the Great Resignation, people are starting to understand, they need this to help do more. The mindset has shifted.”
Retaining Talent
CorroHealth has infused AI into it’s revenue cycle management (RCM) solutions and they position it as a way to “upskill” existing RCM staff rather than replace them.
“Just look at autonomous coding,” said Jason Barnhouse, National Director of Enterprise Solutions at CorroHealth. “If you apply autonomous coding, what you’re doing is you’re turning your coders into auditors – raising their skill set. They’re able to take on more complex cases.”
“It’s investing in the people that are staying loyal,” added Goodale. “You’ve got people that have been doing the same job for years. They’ve stayed in the same role because it’s a need in the organization. But now they have opportunities with upskilling. Now they’ve increased their value to the organization.”
The increased skill and automation of the tedious RCM tasks will serve organizations well as the RCM function becomes more strategic over the next three years.
Road to RCM in 2025
CorroHealth and Healthcare IT Today recently collaborated on an e-book that outlined the changes expected for the RCM function at hospitals by 2025. One of the key trends identified in the e-book was that the RCM function would shift from being a back-office function to a strategic part of healthcare organizations.
This was expected due to:
- The shift to Value Based Care models
- Compliance with prior authorizations requirements
- The desire for increased price transparency
- The continue push to reduce healthcare costs
By helping existing RCM staff to gain new skills and freeing them from the rote aspects of the process, organizations will be well positioned for the coming changes to the revenue cycle landscape.
“I was shocked at ADP survey that we cited in the e-book,” said Goodale. “It said that on a team of 15, only six are considered “safe” [meaning not looking for an opportunity elsewhere]. That’s not good. Not only do we need to be doing things that try to keep our team members happy – giving them work-life balance, career paths and all the good things as an employer. But we’ve got to look at technology. If tomorrow my team of 15 goes to six, how in the world am I going to handle all that workload?”
The answer could be solutions that leverage AI to make things easier for existing staff.
Watch the full interview with Greg Goodale and Jason Barnhouse to learn:
- Why CorroHealth believes we are at a “deep breath” moment for AI in healthcare
- How patient experience is increasingly tied to revenue cycle
- The one thing CorroHealth believes staff need to feel in order to stay
Download the eBook – Road to 2025: Five Revenue Cycle Management Trends That Are Shaping the Future of Healthcare https://corrohealth.com/revcycle2025/
Learn more about CorrroHealth: https://corrohealth.com/
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Transcript
[00:00:08] Colin Hung: Hi, I’m Colin Hung with Healthcare IT Today and I’m excited to sit down with these two gentlemen to talk about a very interesting part of healthcare, RCM -revenue cycle management, and the challenges we are facing in terms of our industry relative to this because of the staffing issues. Sitting down with me is Greg Goodale, Vice President of Marketing at CorroHealth. Welcome Greg,
[00:00:34] Greg Goodale: Thanks Colin
[00:00:35] Colin Hung: And also, Jason Barnhouse national director of enterprise solutions at CorroHealth. Welcome to the program.
[00:00:40] Jason Barnhouse: Thanks Colin. Good to be here.
[00:00:42] Colin Hung: So revenue cycle…but before we go there, what I want to talk about is there’s a big staffing challenge that’s on the minds of everybody that you talk to in healthcare right now. It’s the number one concern. The number one challenge. It’s not just the frontline people, it’s also administrative people who are hard to keep and hard to find. What are you hearing? What have you seeing from your clients relative to staffing issue?
[00:01:08] Greg Goodale: Jason, you wanna take that one?
[00:01:10] Jason Barnhouse: Sure. We’re dealing with the quality-of-life concern. People are wanting to focus on things that matter, not the administrivia of doing the day-to-day work within healthcare. They want to be able to apply their skills to things where they can really have an impact. Trying to find a way to build that quality of life for them through the use of technology and taking some of those components off of their plate, that allow them to focus on the things they really like, is what we’re focusing on.
[00:01:41] Colin Hung: Basically, it sounds like you’re wanting to try to eliminate any excuses for someone to go to go looking for a new job. Make their current job a lot easier. smoother.
[00:01:47] Jason Barnhouse: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:47] Colin Hung: I love it. So even if we come though the staffing issue, I think health organizations are recognizing, they’re going to have to learn how to do more with less.
[00:01:59] They’re not going to be able to just staff and solve the problem by adding more people. Of course, one way is to solve it with technology. Do you think we’re at a point now where people are recognizing that technology can help as opposed to technology can replace people?
[00:02:16] Greg Goodale: We’ve been attending some of the sessions and you’re hearing that. Where people were initially a little afraid, that’s probably the appropriate term, of automation and AI and thinking that’s going to replace my job…now with the Great Resignation, people are starting to understand, actually I need this to help me do more.
[00:02:41] I’ve got more on my plate. The technology is there to support me and let me get back to doing what I’m supposed to do and not all this administrative and heavy workload that I could pass off the technology. So the mindset has shifted.
[00:02:58] It’s not totally shifted. There’s still people that hear that and think, oh, that’s going to replace my job. But with the mix of there being such a massive hit to our staffing availablity. I think we finally hit the right market pressures that have said, okay, I understand. This is for me and this is going to help me do better.
[00:03:19] Colin Hung: I think the pandemic obviously is a wake-up call for on many fronts, but one of the big ones was on staffing. We realize now that when there’s an opportunity to move, people moved. And now it’s so hard to hire back. They have to do more, and technology is a way they can do it. “We’re going to only have five people now instead of ten, but those five can do it because I’ve got some technology to help.”
[00:03:42] Now, in fairness, CorroHealth has never been about replacing people. That’s never been a message of what you guys offer. Instead, you talk about something called upskilling people. By applying your technology, you’re able to upskill people and have them really focus on, as you call it, higher level, more interesting challenges. Why is that important or even more important right now?
[00:04:04] Jason Barnhouse: Just look at autonomous coding, for instance. If you apply autonomous coding, what you’re doing is you’re turning your coders into auditors – raising their skill set. That takes training and building them up so they’re able to take on more complex cases, and move away from lab and radiology, those types of coding functions. If we can automate those things, we can move them into a reviewer position. Then take time to build their skill sets so they can take on same day surgeries and inpatient coding.
[00:04:38] Greg Goodale: I mean honestly, it’s investing in the people that we have that are staying loyal to us. You’ve got people that have been doing the same job, the same tasks for years, some of them decades in this profession. They’ve stayed in the same role mostly because it’s a need in the organization. They’ve gotten good pay raises and the organizations treated them well.
[00:05:01] But now they have opportunities with upskilling where we could take an ED coder as an example, and train them on inpatient principles. Now they’ve not just increased their value to the organization, but they’ve also increased their own skillset for the job market that’s out there. So they’ve advanced their career because we can offset some of the work that they’re doing and give them the tools they need to become their full potential.
[00:05:27] Colin Hung: You are basically eliminating a lot of that…I won’t say mundane, because that’s not mundane work that they’re doing…but you’re essentially allowing them to practice their higher skill set…to use their cognitive functions rather than the rote stuff that they were doing before.
[00:05:42] Both of you are big believers in AI. It’s very obvious. AI and healthcare went through a big hype cycle a few years ago where it was going to solve every problem. AI was the ultimate thing. I think we’ve obviously come down off of that hype. Do you think relative to AI, things have changed for the better now? Are we in a more realistic place in terms of what we expect out of AI?
[00:06:05] Greg Goodale: Yeah, I do. Jason may be able to talk a little bit more about it. What we’re hearing at the show is one of those “deep breath” moments. You talk to clients and they’re starting to understand, yes, this does have a role in my organization, but you want to hear it from the whole industry.
[00:06:20] There’s been multiple sessions, multiple conversations, not just on the show floor, but in the actual sessions here at HIMSS that have proven, to your point, we’re getting past the hype. People are starting to tell their stories and say: Here’s the realities of how this work when we rolled out, as an example, in registration, right?
[00:06:36] Here’s what it looked like when we did that. Here’s some of the things that people thought, ‘oh, you can never change that. We’ve always done it this way. It’s going to get it wrong.’ And they came out on the other side and say: “Hey, this is a reality.”
[00:06:48] I think we’re there. There’s always going to be a few holdouts, but I do think people are starting to realize that this is real. It’s got its place. And they’re starting to look at other areas to roll it out.
[00:07:01] Jason Barnhouse: Yeah. And the patient experience is really coming into focus. So, you know, the example I heard today was: “you go into the doctor, you establish a new patient visit with your doctor and you get a stack of paper – and it’s typically information that you’ve already filled out for another doctor within the health system, or when you went to the hospital to have a procedure done.
[00:07:23] So the fact that we’re trying to bring that to the forefront and having a patient verify their information that is already available, instead of asking them to restate it and scheduling visits and that sort of thing. We’re starting to see that the convenience factor of healthcare, that used to be terribly inconvenient and full of wait time and laborious work. The application of that in the industry to improve the patient experience has become really, really important
[00:07:51] Colin Hung: So let’s talk about the patient experience for a minute here. Greg, over to you. How does improving RCM actually improve the patient experience? Because my mind goes right towards it being a backend process. How does that tie work to patient experience?
[00:08:06] Greg Goodale: Uh….have you ever been frustrated with a bill that you didn’t think was correct?
[00:08:10] At the end of the day, what we don’t want is passing on costs that we can’t justify, to a patient. On the RCM side where we’re applying AI and automation, we’re getting the proper reimbursement out the door, and we’re supporting that with documentation that we can back up. Why that reimbursement is necessary and why those payments should be made. So on the patient satisfaction side, you don’t want them becoming the intermediary that has to argue between the provider and the payer and saying, “no, no, no, this is right. This is wrong.” You want to get it right the first time.
[00:08:43] Jason Barnhouse: And I think also even further upstream in that process before it gets to someone who’s posting payments and that sort of thing, even in the inpatient space, when you’re doing coding for inpatient. Being able to highlight for an auditor, what they need to be looking at, instead of having them randomization of what they’re looking at.
[00:09:03] Spotlighting those things that have the high propensity for error and leveraging machine learning and grabbing the data in order to make sure that your predictive analytics are pointing you in the right direction. The end result of that is when a patient gets a bill that’s right, the satisfaction from that. The workload it takes off of the hospital have to answer those calls of ” why is my bill not right?” And the five or six people that get involved in that process, which is frustrating.
[00:09:35] Colin Hung: Very frustrating, right?
[00:09:38] Full disclosure. We have collaborated recently on an ebook together about the “Road to RCM in 2025”. I think the consensus amongst us was that RCM was going to look very different in 2025 than it does today. The biggest difference being that it’s going to move. Move towards being much more of a strategic function rather than just the back office function. What was your big takeaway from that ebook?
[00:10:02] Greg Goodale: I was actually a little shocked. One of the pieces of research that came out of that one was that the people that are at risk in healthcare. So we had the Great Resignation and people leaving, but there’s still the survey. I think it was ADP survey that we cited in there. There’s still a massive chunk of people that are at risk that say “You know, if a good opportunity came up, I’d be on the look.” And that ended up being, I think it was six out of 15 people.”
[00:10:31] So on a team of 15, only six are safe and that’s not good. Not only do we need to be doing things that try to keep our team members happy and giving them work-life balance and giving them career paths and all the good things that an employer. But we’ve got to look at technology to say, if tomorrow my team of 15 goes to six and I’ve got all these gaps of months trying to hire these people. How in the world am I going to handle all that workload if I’ve got people that could be at risk?
[00:11:02] So that was a, that was a big one for me.
[00:11:05] Jason Barnhouse: And COVID forced the hand of many people to make very quick responses to the situation that was totally out of our control.
[00:11:14] So the thoughtfulness around, how do you apply this technology to make sure not just your patients have a great experience, but that your staff is enjoying what they’re doing and that they feel at the end of the day, what they’re bringing to the table is valuable and that it is recognized.
[00:11:36] I think, more than anything that your staff needs to feel that they’re being recognized for the work that they’re doing, because it is valuable. So,
[00:11:45] Colin Hung: Greg final question for you, where can people go to find out more information about CorroHealth?
[00:11:50] Greg Goodale: Yeah. Simple www.CorroHealth.com We’re big on LinkedIn. Go to LinkedIn, please follow us. We’d love to connect with you there. We put everything on the site, so it’s a great place to go,
[00:12:00] Colin Hung: Gentlemen, thank you. This has been a fantastic conversation as always. It’s always fun to talk about RCM with you with the two of you.
