A ‘Magic Wand’: Hospice Seek to Harness AI’s Potential

Hospice operations are undergoing a metamorphosis in a new era of artificial intelligence as providers pursue greater patient satisfaction and clinical efficiency.

The nation’s growing aging population is swelling during a time of prolific health care workforce shortages. The issue is driving hospices to more closely examine the outlook of AI innovation, according to Matt Tanzer, president of BAYADA Hospice.

BAYADA provides home health, personal care, private duty nursing and hospice services across the United States, India, Ireland, New Zealand and South Korea. Hospices have increasingly turned to technology to improve clinical capacity and documentation, as well as patient outcomes, Tanzer said during a recent Hospice News webinar.

“We’re in a permanent state of nursing shortage,” Tanzer told Hospice News during the webinar. “The magic wand for me would be documentation systems that can help our clinicians be more effective, more efficient … We’re going to need to take this limited, precious resource of our clinical teams and scale it on a much larger population. There is not going to be enough supply of clinicians to keep up with demand as an industry, and this tech has to help solve that problem, or we will have completely missed the boat in terms of the applicability of AI in hospice.”

Patient admission processes represent a challenge that more efficient AI tools could help address, said Paola Pouponneau-Nisbett, senior vice president of home- and community-based services at MorseLife Health System.

Florida-based MorseLife Health System provides home health, hospice, palliative care and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). The nonprofit also offers rehabilitation, long-term, independent and assisted living services, as well as Parkison’s and cannabis-based therapies

Many considerations are involved in the clinical and back-office workflows of patient admission and intake processes, Pouponneau-Nisbett stated. AI tools that are designed to automate workflows and accurately collect patient data could help ensure smoother transitions of care and improve staffing strain, she indicated.

“[It’s] anything that would help [hospices] make sure that an admission is done much quicker, more efficiently and it doesn’t end up causing any kind of back-office and billing issues,” Pouponneau-Nisbett told Hospice News during the webinar. “If I had a magic wand, that’s what I would want. I would want a system that fixes all of that … By doing that, then you don’t have staff worrying so much and be focused more on the delivery of care.”

Hospices have leveraged AI to aid billing claim processing, clinical documentation and revenue cycle management. But providers have looked beyond these capabilities and into ways that AI can help improve access to patient-centered care delivery, according to Bill Riemer, senior vice president of information systems and technology of Empath Health.

“I would love it if there was a magic wand I could use to align all of the various AI aspects [and] look at the entire population, the entire census of any organization from start to finish,” Reimer told Hospice News. “You can actually start to react better proactively to some of the flags through a patient’s cycle with your organization or with hospice. We can be better prepared. The predictive, alerting aspect of [AI] is holistic for the patient.”

Empath Health is the parent company of 17 affiliates and four philanthropic foundations. The Florida-based nonprofit’s Full Life Care model includes hospice, home health care, palliative care, bereavement, PACE and adult day programs, primary care services, advance care planning, HIV and sexual health services, and pharmacy and medical equipment assistance.

Predictive AI analytic tools have allowed hospices to examine patients’ evolving medical and non-medical further upstream, as well as throughout their end-of-life journeys, Reimer stated during the webinar. However, careful consideration is needed to understand and adjust care plans accordingly, particularly when it comes to addressing emotional, spiritual and psychosocial needs alongside pain and symptom management, he indicated.

Key to compliance and quality will be AI tools that integrate and align with hospice-specific regulations set forth by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), according to Reimer.

“Tell us where we’ve been efficient using CMS guidelines and hospice best practices. Where did, and where could we improve?” he said. “We are constantly facing headwinds, between regulatory changes in final rule and reimbursement. Everyone is trying to be as efficient and effective as possible. AI can help us fit that bill, identifying where some of the keys, whether it be timing, and we didn’t do something fast enough. We zigged when we should zagged. All of those inputs are going to make us much more efficient as providers.”