Healthcare’s history of approaching new tech with caution pays ongoing dividends
Healthcare providers are often hailed as “miracle workers,” and small wonder. Diseases that were once untreatable can now be cured, or at the very least treated, managed, and reduced in severity.
And consider the advances in treatments in procedures such as hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, and pacemakers. These were huge advances when they were brought to market decades ago. Over time they have been improved, evolving from days in the hospital and weeks of recovery to, in some cases, outpatient procedures with much less downtime and fewer aftereffects.
This upward trajectory in treatment and outcomes is thanks in part to healthcare’s willingness to ad0pt new technology — and do so cautiously, with a precise, measurable rollout. From clinical trials to years of tests, innovations are carefully vetted and evaluated before they each actual humans.
Data usage evolving alongside treatment advances
That’s also how the healthcare universe approaches data usage. The move from paper-based to all-digital records has been slow, to be sure, but at every stage providers have embraced change in order to improve operations and boost patient outcomes. A major milestone was the rise of digital fax technology, which quickly led to new pathways of digital document usage and storage. It’s safe to say healthcare has never looked back, and more than 70% of the healthcare continuum is still using digital fax to secure care coordination.
There continues to be a thirst for innovation on healthcare’s administrative side. Even with digital fax, information can arrive slowly, or piecemeal, gumming up business processes and slowing operations. The rise of AI is creating innovative ways for the flood of data organizations receive to be leveraged more accurately, swiftly, and securely. The question is, how to proceed without compromising care deliver and also mitigating risk?
The eBook, Understanding Concord’s Practical AI™ Approach, lays out our sensible, incremental method to using AI as a pathway to revolutionize intelligent document processing. By embracing this low-risk, high-yield innovation, one client has achieved a 59% reduction in the manual processing of prior authorization requests. Another has shaved two hours a day from its intake-referral team’s workload. And all without sacrificing data security or integrity.
Concord securely processes 5 billion pages of protected healthcare data every year. And now, our Practical AI™ approach is being adopted by innovative providers to save time, reduce costs, and improve business outcomes.