Is AI Really What Home Health Providers Need Right Now?
According to two home health specialists, maybe/maybe not. It all depends on what type of basic mobile technology capabilities they have – and most providers are lacking the basics.
If you want to make your vehicle go faster, you might be compelled to put in an engine that will give you more horsepower. But if that vehicle is a 20-year-old minivan with a suspension that can’t handle the extra horsepower, you’re not going to get anywhere, much less get there faster. You must first upgrade the suspension to be able to handle the higher-speed turns or you’re going to have a lot more problems to deal with.
That’s the analogy that Ian Fogg from Stratix used when I asked him what he thinks about AI’s usefulness in home health settings.
From Ian’s perspective, loading up clinicians’ mobile devices with AI right now is sort of like putting a powerful new engine in that old minivan without doing any other modifications first. Or it’s akin to thinking that souping up that minivan is the best “solution.” It could be a lot more practical, and make more financial sense, to just buy a car that already has the right engine, suspension, and other features you need to get the experience you want.
I agree with Ian, as does Melissa Bailey, who has spent many years working on the frontlines with clinicians, helping them find new, better ways of working.
As Melissa noted when we spoke recently, “While AI can fit really well into the healthcare model when the integration is driven by empathy – empathy for the patients, empathy for the providers, empathy for the clinicians – it is possible to overengineer any solution.”
All three of us feel that too many people may be trying to put the cart before the horse right now.
As nearly every clinician will tell you, no technology on its own is really a “solution” to any single problem. A mobile device is only as good as the software – the applications – running on it. Having the “best” software won’t do any good if the device doesn’t have the right buttons, screen, memory, or wireless connection to support the process it’s running. And AI won’t solve anything if home health providers aren’t hitting the road or going into patients’ homes with a clinical mobile solution that…
- Reliably stays connected to a wireless network all day, or works without connectivity, no matter where they go.
- Connects to an electronic medical record (EMR) or all the other healthcare information systems and add-on application modules needed to properly care for that patient, such as the wound care module.
- Have the features and functionality to do anything more than basic charting. (Some are lacking the right cameras and lighting for wound documentation, for example.)
- Can last all day without having to be recharged.
- Be trusted to keep sensitive patient data secure from bad actors.
- Enables them to easily call for help in an emergency!
These are all things that home health providers (along with acute care nurses in hospitals) are complaining about today. These are not necessarily things AI is going to fix.
So, you can’t talk about how AI can be used to help clinicians move faster and more efficiently until you fix these things for your clinicians that AI won’t.
That’s exactly why Ian, Melissa, and I committed to some “real talk” about this topic on our latest Clini-Chat podcast episode. If you have 45 minutes, I urge you to hear what we had to say about…
- All the non-AI technology tools that nurses, providers, and therapists urgently need to care for patients in home health settings and how they compare to the tools needed in acute settings.
- How home health compares to homeownership in terms of the support needed to maintain systems. (You can buy all these components to keep things running, but what happens if one breaks or isn’t working like it should? Who do you call? Are you going to be able to find someone who will pick up the phone and help you get things fixed immediately? Or will you be down for several days? The latter is not a good situation as a homeowner. It’s even worse as a home health provider. You have patients sitting in their homes, unable to get the care they need because the home health provider’s mobile tech system is down.)
- Making the dollars make sense. (Meaning, is it really beneficial to give home health providers a clinical mobility solution from a financial perspective? Or is there a cheaper way to get the nurse’s toolbelt set up without it becoming a nurse’s backpack – and ball-and-chain – and in a way that’s future proof and AI-ready?)
- Prioritizing empathy vs. efficiency when making technology purchase decisions.
Hit play now:
If you don't have time to tune in now, you can download the MP3 below or read through the transcript here. There's a lot to take in from this conversation.
