For physicians, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reformulating healthcare systems, and most healthcare professionals say it impacts their lives in a positive way. But while doctors see the advantages of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, they remain reticent. When AI-enabled tools are designed appropriately, doctors feel more optimistic about their benefits in patient care, and nearly two-thirds see AI as an advantage. But despite their positive attitude, many doctors are not currently using AI in their practices just yet.
Today’s typical medical practice utilizes AI tools that include creating discharge instructions, care plans and progress notes as well as handling coding, prior authorizations, and billing tasks. Healthcare professionals have been cautious about the use of this augmented AI, but many see it as a way to reduce the overwhelming administrative burdens placed on physicians.
Doctors Want to Care for Patients
Physicians who use AI should reassure patients that an appropriate medical professional is watching and available to assist in their care. AI principles and guidelines have been established by the American Medical Association (AMA) with an understanding that policy development related to AI will likely continue to rapidly evolve. These principles are intended to provide guidance to physicians and developers on how to best engage with cutting-edge AI-enabled technologies.
Developing, deploying, and utilizing health care AI must be ethical, equitable, responsible, and transparent. This is particularly important when insurers use AI-based systems to determine claim eligibility, or when setting coverage limitations. Payers using automated decision-making systems should also provide any statistics regarding their product’s approval, denial, and appeal rates. It is also essential for payers to provide evidence to the physician that their systems do not discriminate against any group.
For these AI systems to be effective, they should not replace educated clinical judgment, nor should they eliminate the need for the human review of individual circumstances. Clinical decisions that are influenced by AI should include human intervention points during the decision-making process. Prior to issuing a diagnosis, the average treating physician wants to retain the opportunity to discuss the medical necessity of the care directly with the patient.
To evaluate technology appropriately, potential physician users should have access to post-market surveillance that shows the company works toward continued safety, performance, and equity. Regulators and creators alike must provide clear and consistent guidance to practices.
Doctors want accurate information and references that explain how AI decisions are made. They want to see demonstrations of its usefulness and efficacy among similar practices. They also require information about how the AI’s performance is monitored.
Most physician respondents believe AI will help improve diagnostic ability, provide work efficiency, and produce improved clinical outcomes. More than half of polled physicians think AI would be helpful in improving care coordination, user convenience, and patient privacy and safety. However, almost half remain concerned about the impact of AI on the patient-physician relationship.
Less Administrative Duties
An outrageous percentage of an average doctor’s day is spent performing required administrative duties. AI is learning how to perform these tasks more effectively. This is the area where AI will most impact healthcare, and doctors are looking for the relief. Repetitive, monotonous tasks, can, and should be performed by artificial intelligence. This trend has led to the creation of reliable solutions. Instead of replacing doctors, AI could improve the physician’s jobs. Without the day-to-day treadmill of administrative burdens, the medical community could again turn to its most critical task by giving full attention to patient care.
Enthusiasm remains high for AI in documentation of billing codes and updating of medical charts, including visit notes. These platforms can also automate insurance prior authorization and the creation of discharge instructions, care plans or progress notes. Virtual Office Healthcare Solutions has comprehensive software options and proven clinical performance for optimizing healthcare professionals’ practices.
From mining medical records to designing treatment plans for patients, the enormous amount of time a practitioner can reclaim if the administrative process was taken care of by an AI-powered system cannot be understated. Patient care would then once again be the doctor’s main focus. Healthcare chatbots and messaging could provide answers to simple patient questions without requiring GP intervention, saving doctors valuable time.
More Efficient Healthcare
Effective patient communication can help save lives and is beneficial for a practice in numerous ways. As the amount of medical information grows rapidly, the time for face-to-face care with patients is shrinking, and it is becoming humanly impossible for physicians to physically keep up with changing regulations and demands.
Most doctors have almost no free time during their overpacked days. Time consuming required health care processes not only results in patients waiting for hours at doctors’ offices, but also results in medical professionals losing potentially lifesaving time waiting for something like a lab result. Doctors want an AI system that creates the most efficient schedules, whilst directing staff to the next logical task.
Most doctors deal with the daily onslaughts of full inboxes and unread messages that can easily pile up. An AI system can prioritize unread emails instantly and streamline digital communication. This solution allows physicians to share and receive information effortlessly and accurately.
Find Needed Information Fast
Most doctors have mastered the skill of searching for information online using Google search operators and different search engines. However, it still takes valuable time. When an AI OS can answer the question immediately, the solutions become even more attractive. Bots already aim to help patients solve the most common symptoms through AI. Some medical software embodies a chat messaging service that delivers assistant-like answers of health professionals to those who need information.
AI Helps Doctors be Better Doctors
Doctors face a series of challenging decisions every day. Constant calls, in-person questions, email, and more. In this relentless noise of daily information, not every urgent matter reaches the physician. An AI OS can select crucial tasks and direct a doctor’s attention when needed. Moreover, from the patient’s perspective, it currently takes a long time from the onset of recognizing symptoms at home, to seeing a specialist. AI can change that.
Physicians can make mistakes, no matter how adept their medical skills. Clinical and research collaborations are crucial to finding the appropriate solutions for arising and existing medical issues. However, it is often time consuming and difficult to find the most relevant partners. There are already efforts in the works that eliminate this hurdle. What if by discussing every challenging task or decision with an AI, doctors could improve patient care? AI helps doctors locate potential collaborators and invites them to weigh in on questions to provide excellence in patient outcomes.
For example, in the field of clinical trials, AI is building efforts that bridge the gap between patients and the researchers who are developing new and therapeutic drugs. If more patients were able to participate in trials, they will likely become more engaged with potential available treatments. They might even be able to access novel therapeutics prior to FDA approval.
As healthcare organizations continue to explore new ways to improve patient care, it is critical for physicians to work with regulators and policymakers to ensure standards can be adapted by organizations of all sizes and levels of sophistication and infrastructure. This will allow all patients to benefit from AI technologies while also being protected from potential harm. To learn how healthcare AI can help put doctoring back into medicine, contact Virtual Officeware Healthcare Solutions. We’ve got the cutting-edge trusted technology that doctors want, and we can help you get started today so you are better prepared for tomorrow.