Artificial intelligence threatens to disrupt work as we know it, displacing great swaths of the workforce with language models and artificial neural networks that perform least as well as humans. Although that frightens healthcare workers, many are burning out and looking for relief. AI might be exactly what the doctor ordered.
Burnout is real. Nearly half (49%) of physicians felt burned out, and 1 in 5 were depressed in the 2024 Medscape Physician Burnout and Depression report. Administrative work, such as charting and paperwork, was the leading contributor to burnout, with 62% calling it their top source of burnout. About 2 in 5 (41%) said they’re working too many hours.
Burnout is defined (Murthy & US Public Health Service, 2022) as “an occupational syndrome characterized by a high degree of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (i.e., cynicism) and a low sense of personal accomplishment at work.” Burnout leads to quitting; quitting leads to staffing shortages; staffing shortages lead to burnout. It’s a vicious cycle.
More than 145,000 healthcare workers left the workforce (Charted: The Healthcare Worker Exodus (and 3 Ways to Fix It), 2023) in 2021 and 2022. Not surprisingly, approximately 75 million Americans live in government-designed health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) (Shortage Areas, n.d.) for primary care; this number is even higher –122 million – for those seeking mental health care.
“The nation’s health depends on the well-being of our health workforce,” the surgeon general has said (General, 2022). “Confronting the long-standing drivers of burnout among our health workers must be a top national priority.”
AI is one way healthcare workers might reduce paperwork and finish their jobs during regular working hours. Far from being a feared job killer in this context, it’s a productivity machine.
Here are three examples of how AI helps reduce employee burnout for integrated healthcare workers.
Automating Manual Workflows
Consider how much of the work is busy work—engaging, diagnosing, and treating patients compared to filling out forms, entering data, compiling reports, etc. Clinicians can spend more time responding to the computer than getting help from it.
AI is helping healthcare workplaces not only automate tedious tasks but link them together in automated workflows that require human input only when trained human judgment is needed. AI connects action items, notifications, and people and carefully maps business processes to compound the gains made possible by software.
Imagine a patient in an integrated healthcare organization telling her therapist that her medication isn’t helping her cope with intrusive thoughts. Her therapist believes she might benefit from a higher dosage. Without AI’s intelligent automation, the therapist would make handwritten notes of the conversation in the patient record, verbally notify a psychiatrist with the prescribing authority of the medication recommendation, alert the case manager, and periodically check in with all the participants to ensure the medication is prescribed and delivered.
AI can help automate the workflow from the very start. First, intelligent voice-to-text technology captures the initial patient-therapist interchange. Then, AI flags the therapist’s dosage recommendation, automatically designates it as an action item in the organization’s EHR system, electronically notifies the psychiatrist and case manager, connects them in a workflow, and automates every step in the prescription adjustment, payment, and fulfillment process. Humans need only oversee and approve pivotal steps.
With tasks automated and integrated, the clinician and patient now have more time to engage in meaningful conversations. And with less administrative work hanging over their heads, the therapist might be able to see more patients without strain. Teams we’ve worked with report that their therapy sessions are more relaxed, natural, and effective.
Other workflows that could be intelligently integrated and automated throughout an organization include treatment planning, coding, billing, scheduling, calendaring, housing assistance, and insurance claims.
The goal is to free humans to do the work that actually requires trained and skilled humans – i.e., patient interaction and professional oversight – and delegate the rest to technology. Patients benefit by receiving better care.
A Simple Solution for “No Shows”
“No shows” waste capacity and burn staff out by occupying personnel that, without a patient to see in a given timeslot, can’t do any valuable, revenue-generating work. Billions of health care dollars are wasted on no shows. Filling sudden calendar gaps is a race against time that the provider usually loses.
For most integrated healthcare systems, a cancellation, even several hours prior to the appointment, is unlikely to be filled. It takes too long for cancellations to be reported and announced internally and for a new patient to be recruited by office staff from a waiting list that may or may not exist.
In advanced offices, AI is beginning to fill the gaps by automating no-show mitigation. When there’s a cancellation, all relevant colleagues are immediately and automatically notified, as are patients who are waiting for an appointment. The patient clicks a text or email link to accept the new appointment. No one has to manually report an opening, spread the news, or phone around for a replacement.
“Talk to the Avatar”
Digital interactive avatars for patients are another emerging AI tool that is sure to be a big hit. Rather than digging through pages, screens, and databases for information, clinicians speak with the avatar just as they would the real human patient that it represents. All the patient’s data is accessible through the avatar. It’s not an additional security risk; it’s just a different, better interface for ad hoc queries. It’s similar to using the voice chat on a popular chatbot.
This is powerful functionality, but clinicians do need to ensure they’re receiving the correct information from the avatar (as with any generative AI model), especially in serious situations. Yet, in the majority of cases, querying an avatar provides clinicians with good information they would otherwise have to dig for or go without. By refreshing the case manager or therapist with the patient’s updated story, the employee will be far better prepared to help the patient.
These are just some of the ways integrated healthcare organizations are making life easier for busy, hardworking staff. When software does the bulk of the tedious work, the job is more rewarding, and capacity increases. Organizations do more with less. And patients’ lives improve.
Khalid Al-Maskari is founder and CEO of Health Information Management Systems (HiMS), a Tucson, Ariz.-based company that designs Electronic Health Records (EHR) software to transform the integrated health care experience. HiMS creates innovative solutions that lead to better outcomes, lower costs, and higher-quality care. Visit our website to learn more.
References
Murthy, V., MD, MBA & US Public Health Service. (2022). Addressing health worker burnout: The US Surgeon General’s advisory on Building a Thriving Health Workforce. In Addressing Health Worker Burnout: The US Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Thriving Health Workforce (pp. 1–6). www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/health-worker-wellbeing-advisory.pdf
Charted: The healthcare worker exodus (and 3 ways to fix it). (2023, October 18). www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2023/10/18/healthcare-workforce.
Shortage areas. (n.d.). data.hrsa.gov/topics/health-workforce/shortage-areas
General, O. O. T. S. (2022, May 23). New Surgeon General Advisory sounds alarm on health worker burnout and resignation. HHS.gov. www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/05/23/new-surgeon-general-advisory-sounds-alarm-on-health-worker-burnout-and-resignation.html
