Health Automation: Good or Bad?

If you are worried about health automation and AI, this article by John Lynn at Healthcare IT Today will give you perspective on what industry leaders think. Brooke LeVasseur, CEO at AristaMD gave her opinion:

Today, millions of patients will require specialty care but won’t receive it in a timely manner due to barriers related to insurance status, location, or logistical and bureaucratic hurdles. In a high-functioning healthcare system, PCPs are the quarterbacks of care and are responsible for coordinating care transitions for their patients. However, they often do not have the data and tools needed to make these transitions effectively. The result is delays in care for the patient and hundreds of wasted administrative hours at the clinic.

Without automation tools, clinics may rely on sticky notes and excel spreadsheets documenting their own (often limited) personal networks for referrals and often use inefficient methods, like phone or fax, to place referrals. This manual process results in delays in care, inappropriate referrals and improper patient/provider matching. To address this need, referral management solutions are now available that automate many routine referral tasks and ingest data on the reason for the referral, location, patient insurance and other quality metrics to recommend the best provider for the patient to be referred to. Automating the referral process removes hours of clinic time and can ensure patients get the care they need from the right provider as fast as possible.