Historically, supporting after-hours care has been a significant challenge for healthcare practices. Whether it’s hiring additional staff to manage after-hours patient calls or addressing messages and requests from the previous night, there continues to be a gap in the care available to patients outside of typical business hours. While the former can be expensive, the latter can lead to delays in addressing patient needs.
According to a recent survey conducted to understand the impact of AI on healthcare, 62% of healthcare practices spend 4+ hours daily answering patient calls and managing appointments. Managing these calls while supporting in-person patients creates a huge administrative burden on staff, especially as many patients prefer calling their doctor’s office directly.
In fact, keeping up with inbound patient inquiries, even during a regular workday, can be difficult amidst persistent staffing shortages. With McKinsey projecting an estimated 86,000 physician deficit by 2036, the shortage of healthcare professionals remains a critical issue for the industry.
Some larger practices may use traditional contact centers, which often put patients on hold or have long wait times that can create frustration. However, practices can now bridge these gaps in care by adopting AI-powered contact centers.
In 2023, healow introduced Sunoh.ai, a revolutionary EHR-agnostic AI medical scribe that is now trusted by over 80,000 providers nationwide. The AI medical scribe saves providers up to two hours daily on clinical documentation, helping to reduce physician burnout and improve patient satisfaction. Following the tremendous success of Sunoh.ai, healow launched healow Genie, an AI-powered contact center solution that operates 24/7, ensuring patients receive timely information whenever they need it.
Addressing Gaps in After-Hours Care
The rapid and widespread adoption of digital health tools has raised patient expectations for timely access to care. Although staffing shortages can make it difficult for provider offices to meet these expectations, AI-powered contact center solutions like healow Genie are here to help.
- Round-The-Clock Assistance:
A patient’s healthcare journey doesn’t end when a provider leaves the office. Optimal and strong healthcare outcomes require access to care 24/7, a standard difficult for healthcare practices to maintain. AI-powered contact centers manage after-hours patient calls, texts, chatbot inquiries, and emails, enabling providers to enjoy a healthy work-life balance while patients receive prompt responses to their care needs. - Efficient and Continuous Care:
A lack of attentiveness to after-hours care can frustrate patients. An AI medical receptionist promptly answers inbound calls from patients without putting them on hold, addressing simple questions in natural language. This technology generates detailed transcripts of calls, summarizing them to streamline follow-ups, ensuring no patient concern is overlooked or forgotten. If after-hours inquiries are complex and require escalation, healow Genie smartly makes the patient’s medical records available to the on-call provider to ensure continuous, high-quality care, summarizing all discussions in the patient’s progress notes to keep the primary care providers informed. - Multilingual Support:
AI-powered contact centers are multilingual, making them accessible to a diverse patient population. This capability ensures that language barriers do not impede access to care. - An EHR-Agnostic Solution:
The AI-powered contact center solution, healow Genie, is fully integrated with leading EHRs, such as eClinicalWorks, and can work with any other EHR. The AI medical receptionist reviews patients’ medical histories and offers tailored insights and notifications to on-call providers, meeting patients’ needs while reducing the administrative burden on provider offices. - Customization:
healow Genie’s functionalities are customizable, and the AI solution can be trained to ask patients specific questions based on the specialty of care. It is a cost-effective solution that offers after-hours services, combatting staffing shortages and enhancing efficiency.
Bridging Gaps in Communication with AI Medical Receptionists
The healthcare ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and new digital innovations are transforming the way practices operate and serve their patients. AI-powered contact center solutions like healow Genie are redefining outpatient management, driving efficiencies, addressing patient needs for on-demand care, and ultimately improving health outcomes. By seamlessly bridging communication gaps between patients and providers’ offices, these solutions ensure that every patient receives timely care and attention. As healthcare continues to advance, AI-powered contact centers are poised to play an integral role in facilitating more effective and efficient communication in the medical field.
