No sector of the American economy is experiencing the kind of seismic shift that information technology is undergoing.
Long known for plying innovations out of zeros and ones, coders and software providers are unleashing artificial intelligence solutions for just about any problem skilled nursing operators bring to the table. At the core of long-term care is data, and technology has vastly improved how efficiently that data can be used to help retain and retrain workers, enhance workflows and better patient outcomes
“There’s not enough time in the day to manually comb through files and non-electronic records to find what’s going to go bump in the night within the long-term care realm, especially during such a transformative time in healthcare,” says James Yersh, chief revenue officer of senior care for PointClickCare.
But now, even problems that have long vexed the brightest engineers are inching closer to being solved. Take interoperability, which Scott Code, vice president of LeadingAge CAST, predicts to be a thing of the past as soon as 2030.
Still, complex challenges remain.
In no particular order, according to Bharat Monteiro, MatrixCare’s general manager of senior living and long-term solutions, these include: an aging population that continues to swell; floundering reimbursement; and labor issues with little likelihood of resolving attrition without new and better ideas.
Such chaos and turbulence inevitably lead to better ideas. But it won’t happen without pain.
Those pain points may include a leap of faith for those who aren’t yet entirely comfortable with artificial intelligence.
“We must be careful about how we use new AI,” says Nicole Fallon, LeadingAge vice president of Integrated Services and Managed Care. “It is critical that we understand the inputs that inform the ‘work’ AI helps alleviate.”
Another critical concern is improving the information backbone of long-term care — the electronic medical record, which Monteiro believes is “outdated.” And providers and developers also must prepare to address seismic shifts in labor together.
From the September 2024 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
