This series has sought to highlight the challenges and opportunities in the patient journey through the business of healthcare. In reflecting on the story of the evolution of healthcare in the United States, we’ve shown how the evolving healthcare system has inadvertently brought about unanticipated challenges to patients and caregivers while also bringing remarkable advancements in medical care. The size, scope, and complexity of the healthcare industry is, of course, immense, requiring us to recognize the interconnectedness of the burden consumers face in managing not only their healthcare, but also the business of their healthcare.
There are, indeed, problems to solve.
But modern innovation is helping to carve a path forward.
Emerging AI tools and other innovations are creating opportunities to tackle large, unwieldy, systemic problems seen, felt, and heard throughout healthcare—problems that were previously inaccessible or unknown.
One of the most important starting places in understanding the burden healthcare consumers face is to listen, literally listen to them in their moments of struggle as they navigate the business of their care, because in those moments patients and caregivers are telling us exactly what they need and how they need us to change.
At Authenticx, we use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help humans listen at scale. We listen to not just a few, but to millions of conversations between people wanting and needing to focus on their health and the organizations that are striving to provide that support. We hear how patients are trying to understand and figure out the right path forward, but instead are forced to focus on the business of managing their health.
What Problems Can Conversational AI Help Solve in Healthcare?
By deploying AI to listen at scare, healthcare organizations and businesses can learn specifically where their customers are ill-equipped and what specific healthcare business barriers they’re facing so that the right improvements can be made.
Patients are not equipped to navigate the business of their healthcare
The complex interplay between healthcare providers, payers, pharmaceuticals, and pharmacies often generate confusion and uncertainty for patients and caregivers in understanding the terminology and processes they need in order to verbalize a problem or pursue a necessary course of action. Listening at scale means aggregating voices of an entire patient population to collectively understand and identify those specific barriers and sources of confusion which, in turn, can help determine where organizations and businesses can refine their processes for patients to receive care more efficiently. Healthcare-specific AI models make it possible to analyze large volumes of conversations and aggregate trends and patterns from those conversations in an impactful way.
Patients face barriers in accessing care
Highly specialized healthcare systems have brought administrative backlogs, knowledge gaps, limited resources, financial roadblocks, and more, which have burdened patients and caregivers in their efforts to access care. They face challenges with the coordination and collaboration of various healthcare businesses to navigate the processes and systems required to document care needs.
By listening at scale through AI, we can now hear the specific barriers customers face. For example, AI enables us to hear patterns in conversations about the following:
- Insurance claim denials
- Documentation burdens on healthcare providers
- Delayed treatment due to administrative needs
- Digital inaccessibility
- Gaps in medical care or treatment
- Poor healthcare outcomes due to missed appointments or financial burdens
These stories, detected by both AI and human listening, are critical sources of feedback.
The data generated from AI analysis of healthcare conversations can then be brought to life through data-backed storytelling which weaves quantitative measures about prevalence rates and trends of content and sentiment in conversations and qualitative measures which reveal context and root causes.
Data-backed storytelling links aggregated data directly to the human experience. It’s hard to unhear the direct voice of someone explaining their obstacles and challenges, while data visualizations and reports don’t always provide the necessary context. Weaving quantitative and qualitative data together tells a compelling story that drives change and clear action that is profound and meaningful.
What’s Next? The Next Era of Customer Listening is Here
Conversational AI, listening at scale, data-backed storytelling – these are all innovative approaches to changing the current state of healthcare. It can feel daunting to prompt systemic change in an immensely complicated industry.
Change starts with a single step. Consider these immediate action items that can take place today, right now.
- Understand past processes: Take time to read, investigate why and how certain regulations, governing bodies, internal processes were developed and enacted. Assess and reflect on how past processes can inform or empower future change.
- Listen to a patient voice: There is power in listening to a conversation. Take a moment to listen to a phone call or connect directly with a patient to hear their story and feedback in their own words.
- Reimagine and recognize new opportunities: Push past the mentality of ‘that’s just the way it is’ and let your imagination consider new possibilities. Explore new and emerging technologies and consider how they could enact change in your day-to-day role and responsibilities.
The healthcare industry was created from a core desire to care for the health and well-being of people. While the size and scope have grown and evolved, that core purpose remains the same. Rather than focusing on the business of our health, this is a call to action to reprioritize how best to promote health-driven outcomes and care.
Authenticx + Crushing Complexity
Healthcare impacts all of us; this story is OUR story. Authenticx is excited to introduce Crushing Complexity: The Evolving Business of Healthcare, created by Sally Perkins. This presentation is a conversation starter around the business of healthcare, examining the past and present to prompt action for a more hopeful future. No one can deny the fact that healthcare in the U.S. is complex. But how did we get here? How do patients and caregivers experience that complexity? And are we, in fact, crushing it, or is it crushing us? Based on the study of millions of conversations from all segments of healthcare— payers, providers, and pharmaceuticals— this presentation takes a 30,000-foot view of our healthcare system and its impact on consumers and business outcomes.
Audiences come along on a journey through time, and into the experiences of patients and caregivers, to confront the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system and inspire us all to take a hard look at what we’ve created and why it must change.
We believe the key to enacting change is to listen to patients, putting their voices in the center of healthcare business discussions.
ABOUT SALLY PERKINS
Sally Perkins serves as an Insight Storyteller at Authenticx, a conversational intelligence company. In her role as an Insight Storyteller, Sally analyzes quantitative and qualitative conversational data from which she crafts impactful data-backed stories that offer insights into how healthcare organizations can improve the customer experience and improve business outcomes.
Prior to her work at Authenticx, Sally was a Professor of Rhetorical Studies at California State University Sacramento and an adjunct faculty member at Butler University in Indianapolis. She is also a professional story performer and has trained hundreds of professionals on telling compelling stories to accomplish business objectives. On Sally’s best days, she can be found telling stories to kids at Riley’s Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.
About Authenticx
Authenticx was founded to analyze and activate customer interaction data at scale. Why? We wanted to reveal transformational opportunities in healthcare. We are on a mission to help humans understand humans. With a combined 100+ years of leadership experience in pharma, payer, and healthcare organizations, we know first-hand the challenges and opportunities that our clients face because we’ve been in your shoes.
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