Structuring Data Helps Providers Tackle Workforce Management Challenges

March 28, 2022 - Clinical and administrative workforce management has become an increasingly complex problem for healthcare organizations to address, made more salient by a pandemic that has taken a toll on providers and led many to exit the workforce. With fewer clinical and administrative staff, the healthcare system will not be able to keep pace with demand, barring significant changes to clinical practice.

One straightforward way organizations can navigate the healthcare talent shortage is to eliminate inefficiency and waste tied to administrative tasks and processes that get in the way of care delivery. With volumes of medical data existing as unstructured data, leveraging technology to improve health data exchange and the availability of high-value information must become a strategic imperative. Natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence automation can be useful tools to boost clinical efficiency by extracting information from unstructured and locked-down sources, which can accelerate time to care.

A workforce in peril

Repeated strain on the healthcare system is taking its toll on the provider workforce, with the global pandemic leading to a departure of medical professionals at a staggering rate in a short period of time. Recent data paint a bleak picture about today’s clinical workforce. Recent findings indicate that 20% of healthcare workers have quit during the pandemic, and 31% of their former colleagues are considering the same. What’s more, clinicians still practicing find themselves in untenable positions. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, 40% of physicians reported signs of burnout. Concerningly, that number has increased to as high as 75% for clinicians today — the result of practicing in healthcare environments that are understaffed and facing surges in demand.

Relief appears to be nowhere in sight. For example, the Association of American Medical Colleges is projecting physician shortages in primary care between 17,800 and 48,000 by 2034. On the one hand, 2 of every 5 physicians is approaching retirement over the next decade. On the other hand, the US population is growing and aging, creating new demand for care for patients over 65. Nurses are also facing shortages, and fewer students are enrolling in
nursing programs.

In light of this clinical talent shortage, hospitals and health systems are allocating billions of dollars in additional funding to ensure sufficient levels of qualified clinical labor. According to Premier, rising labor costs result from increased overtime and reliance on agency staff. Left unchecked, a clinical labor shortage could lead to a decrease of $54 billion in net income for hospitals across the country.

Administrative burden and dissatisfaction

Provider dissatisfaction was on the rise before the coronavirus pandemic came west, and it is fast approaching its peak.

By and large, the chief contributor to clinical burnout is the number of bureaucratic tasks (e.g., charting, paperwork) as reported by 60 percent of respondents in a Medscape annual survey. From a financial standpoint, burnout is costly.

The National Academy of Medicine estimates that it costs the healthcare system $4.6 billion annually before COVID-19, meaning that number has since risen. The organization reports that increased patient volumes alongside more regulations and requirements are making providers feel overwhelmed and incapable of spending sufficient time on patient care.

Clearly, repeated manual tasks and processes — that is, administrative burden — are getting in the way of providers being able to bring their medical training to bear on patient care, which is why so many entered the professional and find the work meaningful.

Allowing clinicians to practice at the top of their profession and have more time for patients is a challenge for healthcare organizations to overcome, but solutions are available to work smarter, not harder.

Using intelligent document extraction to reduce administrative burden

During the early days of the pandemic, a panel of medical experts organized by the American Hospital Association released a prescient guidance document about how AI can benefit the healthcare workforce.

Based on data that 40% and 30% of tasks done by nonclinical and clinical staff, respectively, by forms of NLP and AI, experts are optimistic that the technology could lead to improvements in performance, productivity, and efficiency and expanded job responsibilities through upskilling and retraining to allow clinicians to practice at the top of their license.

Nearly half of healthcare executives are looking to these intelligent tools to automate business processes, such as administrative tasks or customer service, as their top priority. Typically, these tasks encapsulate data collection and sharing, often handled manually.

“As AI and machine learning ease the burden on health care workers by reducing administrative tasks as well as the mining and processing of medical information and patient records for faster and more accurate decisions, staff time opens up for tasks that only a human can do — problem solving, critical thinking and having conversations with patients,” the report stated.

According to the AHA panel, much of the work to reduce administrative tasks starts with streamlining how information moves throughout a healthcare organization and outside its four walls. First and foremost, they must improve the availability of high-quality information to clinicians trapped inside unstructured data sources.

“Much of health care’s data is unstructured, meaning it’s not in a standardized and digitized format that a computer software program can easily digest and organize,” the report’s authors explained. “The challenge for hospitals and health systems will be how to extract data from internal and external information systems and build connections into their AI systems to send them enough structured data to have predictive value and produce useful outcomes.”

Hence the growing interest in artificial intelligence to use optical reader and natural language processing technology tailored to healthcare settings. The technology exists today, but healthcare organizations must apply it to the right people and processes to see a positive return on investment. While future advancements in AI will aid clinical decision-making by predicting disease pathology and recommending treatments, healthcare organizations must unleash NLP and AI on administrative tasks first that are currently bogging down care delivery.

“That’s why it’s critical for hospitals and health systems big and small to start in the right place with the right tasks and the right technology in order to achieve the right outcomes,” the authors advised. “Start with highly repetitive, transactional tasks where there are opportunities to capture a great deal of efficiency.”

Healthcare organizations have access to tools today that can improve the provider experience by eliminating manual tasks and making timely and accurate data available to clinicians at the point of care. However, for NLP and AI to positively impact care quality and outcomes in the years ahead, it must first prove itself reliable in automating basic tasks before expanding to other applications.

While much work remains to supply the healthcare industry with qualified clinicians, hospitals and health systems can have an immediate impact on the provider experience by removing obstacles in the way of data-driven clinical decision-making. Providers want to care for patients, and they need reliable data to deliver the best care possible. NLP and AI can quickly and securely turn disparate pieces of data into actionable information that, in turn, sets the stage for more meaningful interactions between patients and providers.

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About Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc.

Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: CCSI) is a global leader of digital technology for secure information transport. The company leverages its technology heritage to provide secure solutions that transform simple digital documents into actionable information, including advanced healthcare standards HL7 and FHIR for secure data exchange. Consensus offers eFax Corporate, a leading global cloud faxing solution; Consensus Signal for automatic real-time healthcare communications; Consensus Clarity, a Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence solution; Consensus Unite and Consensus Harmony interoperability solutions; and jSign for secure digital signatures built on blockchain. For more information about Consensus, visit consensus.com and follow @ConsensusCS on Twitter.

To learn more, visit go.consensus.com/clarity