Enhancing Patient Care Through AI-Driven Provider Order Intake & Engagement

In a world where waiting for critical care can have life-altering impacts on health outcomes, AI-driven order intake emerges as a beacon of hope, transforming frustrating delays in the order to appointment setting process into swift actions, converting errors into accuracy, and most importantly, giving precious time back to both patients and provider staff, including nurses and front-office admin. This revolutionary approach doesn't just streamline processes — it rekindles the human touch in healthcare, ensuring that every patient's journey to specialized treatment is as smooth and swift as the care they deserve.

Understanding the Hurdles in Traditional Order Processing

Picture this: You've finally mustered the courage to see a doctor about that nagging health concern. After a thorough examination, your physician recommends and orders a diagnostic test such as an MRI to diagnose any larger concerns and risks. Great news, right? Well, not so fast. What follows is often a frustrating maze of paperwork, a flurry of manual processing by the provider who received the order, long wait times before you can actually schedule your time-sensitive appointment, and anxiety-inducing uncertainty.

In the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, timely and accurate processing of patient referrals and orders is crucial. For example, specialty providers in fields such as radiology and oncology centers, outpatient surgery centers, and kidney care facilities face a daunting challenge — managing the influx of multi-page faxed order forms from referring physicians. This process requires manual processing of faxes that are often very lengthy, and include orders and other documentation across multiple patients, resulting in delays, errors, and increased operational costs and turn-around times. Those turn-around times are often crucial when a patient urgently needs the care that was ordered, and cannot schedule their appointment until the order is processed completely.

The numbers paint a stark picture:

• Providers nationwide are taking 3-5 business days or more to process just one days’ incoming order faxes.
• On average, patients wait 26 days to see a specialist, with some specialties like dermatology having wait times of up to 32 days.
• Up to 70% of medical records contain errors, with 30% of test orders being misfiled or misplaced.
• 35% of patients report that wait times have caused their condition to worsen.
• Healthcare providers spend an average of 16 minutes per patient on electronic health records, reducing time for direct patient care.

These statistics aren't just numbers; they represent real people anxiously waiting for care, real conditions potentially worsening, and real healthcare professionals struggling to keep up with the paperwork tsunami.

Here at Ushur, we always work to put the end user first, developing solutions that affect both companies and individuals in a positive way. This use case in particular is even more personal to Ushur — our very own Yvonne Daugherty, Ushur’s Head of Industry, needed to see a provider for a health diagnostic, but order processing delays and clerical errors were getting in the way. With the delays' prolonging in getting approved and paperwork sorted just so she could schedule an appointment, Yvonne was then also forced to drive to and from doctors' offices just to hand-deliver her member ID card and driver’s license since those were lost with the order fax and supporting paperwork her PCP had faxed to the provider. “A solution like Ushur can solve for extreme delays in a critically important process that often goes overlooked, but has real impacts towards patients' stress and anxiety levels as well as health outcomes. My own experience has shown me how vital this can be to patients needing to see a provider,” says Yvonne. “The need for patients to hand-deliver paperwork, wait many extra days to schedule time sensitive appointments, and the sheer volume of unorganized paperwork that doctors' offices receive results in delays and duress that potentially unwell patients should not have to endure.”

How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Operations for Providers

But what if there was a way to cut through this red tape? Enter domain-specific AI — the game-changer in healthcare operations.

Providers can leverage AI to streamline their complex order intake process. By harnessing the power of automation and artificial intelligence, healthcare providers can process complex faxes, automatically gather missing patient data, and improve patient experiences.

Here's how AI-powered solutions are revolutionizing the intake process:

1. Intake: Automating patient data capture from faxes with multiple patients using AI-powered Intelligent Document Automation (IDA).
2. Gather: Automatically identify and gather missing patient contact and diagnosis information from the referring provider.
3. Engage: Digitally communicate with patients and prescribing providers through two-way, HIPAA secure digital channels to schedule appointments, automate follow-up reminders, and share proactive appointment preparation details.
4. Streamline: Seamlessly integrate extracted data into backend clinical systems, eliminating manual entry and optimizing workflows.

The results? AI can reduce order processing time by up to 80%. It's not just about efficiency; it's about giving healthcare providers and their team more time to do what they do best — care for patients.

Unleashing the Power of AI for Efficient Care

Accelerating Approval Timelines

Imagine a world where your healthcare journey is as smooth as your favorite digital journey. That's the promise of AI for streamlining access to care.

HIPAA-secure automation can accelerate the order intake process by empowering live agents to efficiently capture imaging orders and other essential information and documentation. Here's how:

1. Live agents can deploy a HIPAA-secure digital experience to capture essential documents and information from referring providers as well as patients.
2. Patients can use this app-like experience to securely upload documents, such as imaging orders, member ID cards, and driver’s licenses via their mobile device.
3. The uploaded documents are securely loaded directly into backend systems for order processing.
4. Patients can receive tailored pre-appointment reminders and educational content, such as test, treatment and procedure preparation instructions.
5. Secure patient engagements reduce last-minute rescheduling, no-shows, and complex manual interventions.

The impact? “AI-powered solutions can reliably lower patient wait times by 30%, and reduce staff overtime by 50%, while also accommodating a 15% increase in patient volume growth in infusion centers,” according to Memorial Fund Innovation Care. That's not just a statistic; it's peace of mind for patients anxiously awaiting critical care.

But it's not just about speed. It's about better communication:

• 68% of patients prefer digital communication for routine healthcare interactions, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
• AI chatbots can handle up to 90% of routine questions, freeing up staff for more complex patient needs. There are AI chatbots built on domain and company-specific FAQs and knowledgebases to avoid the risk of AI hallucinations, and also route patients to live support when required.
• 75% of patients report higher satisfaction when AI is used to streamline administrative processes, according to that same GAO paper.

Minimizing Errors and Enhancing Accuracy

We're all human, and humans make mistakes. But when it comes to healthcare, errors can have serious consequences. AI acts as a vigilant guardian, reducing human error and improving data interpretation and consistency. It's like having a tireless, ultra-precise assistant working 24/7 to ensure every 't' is crossed and every 'i' is dotted in your medical records.

Putting Patients First: The Real-World Impact

The patient-centric benefits of AI-driven order intake are transformative. Reduced wait times for care mean patients can access critical treatments sooner, potentially improving health outcomes. Improved communication between providers and patients fosters trust and engagement in the care process. The enhanced overall patient experience, from easier appointment scheduling to clearer pre-visit instructions, reduces stress and anxiety associated with seeking specialized care.

For patients with chronic conditions or those facing potentially life-threatening illnesses, these improvements can make a world of difference. Imagine a cancer patient receiving a prompt appointment with an oncologist, or a patient with a rare condition quickly connecting with the right specialist – these scenarios become more achievable with AI-driven processes. 

For our own Yvonne, a solution that immediately ingests these documents means she doesn’t need to physically drive down to a provider’s office — 30 minutes across town — to share her member ID and driver's license to fill order intake gaps. It also means the ability to schedule a diagnostic test can happen within days, not weeks, greatly reducing stress levels.

Conclusion

Ushur's Provider Order Intake & Engagement Solution is at the forefront of this healthcare revolution. By reducing turnaround times for the entire fax referral and order intake process, it supports high-volume processing more quickly, accurately, and effectively. This not only alleviates the operational burden by eliminating manual intake work but also allows patient appointments to be scheduled sooner.

The benefits of AI in order intake are clear: faster processing, fewer errors, better communication, and ultimately, improved patient outcomes. For healthcare providers looking to embrace these AI solutions, the time is now.

Ready to transform your operations and provide better patient experiences? Explore Ushur's innovative solutions and take the first step towards a more efficient, patient-centric future in healthcare.

In the end, it's not just about processing orders faster. It's about getting patients the care they need when they need it. It's about reducing anxiety, improving outcomes, and ultimately, saving lives. And that's a future we can all get excited about.Ready to see how AI can revolutionize your order intake process? Learn more about Ushur’s solutions and start your journey towards improved patient care today at ushur.com/request-demo.