The healthcare industry is facing an artificial intelligence boom, and home care providers are left with questions as to how and why they should adopt AI tools. Many who are already involved in the space say the technology has the potential to transform care at home, and stress that the best way to get started with AI is to start experimenting today.

“I’ve been trying to tell people to really just be experimental, be willing to play with the technologies that are out there and do a bit of research,” Jeff Salter, chief executive officer of Caring Senior Service, told McKnight’s Home Care Wednesday in an interview.

Caring Senior Service, which is based in San Antonio, offers personal care at approximately 50 locations across the US. The company recently started using AI to improve consistency and eliminate communication breakdowns during phone calls. 

“Managing 50 locations, we have 250-plus employees that could be answering the phone at any time, and any one of those phone calls could be a client asking about our services and how our services could benefit them staying at home,” Salter said. “Like most companies, we do lots of training on that. We try to make sure that people answering the phone do a good job, but it’s really hard — it’s almost impossible — to manage that conversation across such a large workforce, and that’s a common problem.”

Salter said the solution was found in AI. Caring Senior Service began using the technology to screen, transcribe and summarize phone calls, then analyze whether staff greeted the caller properly, showed empathy during the conversation and offered services that matched the caller’s needs. Finally, the AI produced an overall grade of how well Caring Senior Service staff helped the caller, Salter explained.

And while AI can be useful for assisting client-facing operations, providers can also use it to enhance internal processes. In addition to improving interactions with new customers, AI has also made interoffice communication more efficient for Caring Senior Service, according to Salter.

Still, the technology is not without flaws, and providers should use strategies to offset AI’s weaknesses, he said.

“[AI] does still get some points wrong,” Salter noted. “But we’ve made sure to put a human in the middle, if you will, as much as possible. That way, nothing is client-facing or done automatically without a human deciding, ‘Yeah, that looks good.’”

Looking ahead

So what does the future hold for AI in home care? Salter said he believes many jobs will become much easier with the help of AI. He noted that scheduling, in particular — a high-stress, high-burnout position for many home care companies — can transform into a much simpler task with AI assistance.

“I’d be willing to say that a year from now, the process of scheduling will be much less human-involved because of the data that we all have,” Salter said. 

How to get started

Technology companies already see home care as the next frontier for AI-assisted evolution. Vivid Health, an AI-based clinical documentation platform, recently expanded into the home health market. The firm’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Patrick Mobley, said that home care providers should be curious in their search for AI enhancement.

“Be curious, play around with it and get comfortable with what it can do — even outside of the context of something clinical,” Mobley said Wednesday in an interview with McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse. “From there, when you’re looking to evaluate vendors or potential solutions that are out there, remain open minded, remain curious. But think about what problems you’re trying to solve, both from an internal perspective and a patient outcome perspective, and if you can thread that needle between the two, you’re going to have a really successful internal operation.”

The McKnight’s Tech Daily is an e-newsletter for the audiences of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care.