In implementing AI, home care agencies must address staff, patient fears, leaders say

Artificial intelligence offers many opportunities to improve home care such as reducing unnecessary documentation. But rolling it out requires clear communication with staff and patients, along with proper guardrails.

Those were some of the insights from panelists representing home health, home care, consulting and technology companies during a recent webinar, “The state of AI in home care: Opportunities and obstacles,” from the McKnight’s Home Care AI Forum.

“I think there’s both an excitement and a fear among our team members (about the use of AI),” said Betta Swanson, chief transformation officer for Elara Caring, a leading provider of home care services.

“I would say the greatest excitement is the opportunity to reduce the administrative burden of the job for our clinicians, in terms of documentation and really being able to provide more care to the patients,” she said. “So, as we think of strategy going forward, the issue is how can we focus on the exciting parts of AI for people and kind of let the fear melt away.”

Despite the potential obstacles and risks, panelists agreed that AI provides opportunities to improve patient care and operational efficiency that home care providers can’t afford to ignore.

“There’s a risk of getting left behind if you’re doing nothing with AI. There’s a spectrum of how you can bring AI into your organization,” said Adrian Schauer, CEO of AlayaCare, a home healthcare software company that provides technology solutions for the global home care market, and the sponsor of the webinar.

Facing employees’ concerns

One of the major challenges that providers face when implementing AI in their organizations is overcoming the concerns staff and patients may have about the new technology.

While clinical staff that provide patient care in particular enjoy the transcription features of AI in reducing time spent on documentation, employees who perform back office functions, such as payroll, billing, compliance or scheduling fear that the technology may eventually eliminate the need for their jobs, according to Michelle Pickering, COO with Momentum Healthcare and Technology Consulting.

Pickering said it’s important for home care providers to communicate with staff that they view AI as a “co-pilot,” not a job replacer, which is designed to improve efficiency in the organization’s operations.

On the clinical side, patients are also sometimes reticent about having AI technologies, such as ambient monitoring or voice monitoring, in their homes.

“Especially with the hospice patients and older adult population, with the voice monitoring and ambient monitoring, there’s still a lot of fear among older adults about bringing that into the home,” she said. “If you introduce this correctly to the patients, they ultimately don’t care. I think it’s a delicate balance, especially in that population.”

Honest conversations

Having honest conversations with patients about the benefits of the AI-powered remote monitoring technology, such as the ability to identify changes in a patient’s condition or to get ahead of an illness or a medication issue that clinical staff may not have noticed, can help alleviate some of those concerns for older adults, according to Michael Slupecki, CEO of Griswold, a nonmedical home care franchise company.

“The word AI can be kind of unnerving to some of the older clients,” he said.

Slupecki said AI-powered transcription technology can also be useful to improve interactions between clinicians and patients because staff can spend more time listening to their patients’ concerns rather than typing notes into a system. “I think it increases the engagement and connection with the clients,” he said.

However, he said that providers need to be careful when selecting a technology vendor to ensure the technology is safe and compliant with regulatory and patient privacy concerns.

“A lot of technology people are more concerned about selling their technology than they are compliance,” he said. “It’s a really dangerous game to do everything that you’re getting pitched.”

Establishing an AI policy

When choosing a technology partner, Pickering said providers need to do careful vetting to ensure the vendor they choose understands their company’s compliance and risk management needs, including regulations like HIPAA and other regulatory and privacy policies, and invests in educating staff about appropriate AI use.

And, despite the growing use of AI, she noted that a surprising number of home care companies still have no formal AI policies.

For those companies that are looking to establish an AI use policy, she said it’s important to develop a strategic, carefully laid-out plan for appropriate AI use, and have a communication and education plan that effectively communicates that policy to employees.

“I think really starting small is going to be your best bet,” she said. “You have employees that are using AI right now. They’re using it every day but they’re not always using it safely, they’re not paying attention to HIPAA. It’s not because they’re not trying to follow the process; they just don’t understand the inherent risk in it.”

Swanson said it’s also important to have human oversight of AI, especially when making decisions that are clinical in nature and impact patient health or privacy. One of the things their company did was establish an AI governance council, composed of legal, compliance, technical and other professionals, before AI implementation.

“It’s definitely a good idea to have some policies in place and a group that thinks about the policies up front,” she said.

Schauer agreed. While the use of AI is a valuable tool for home care providers, he noted that it does not eliminate the need for human oversight of the technology.

“I think it’s very important to have ultimate human accountability associated with every output and outcome in your business,” Schauer said.

Listen to this webinar and others from the McKnight’s Home Care AI Forum on demand.

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