The healthcare industry is experiencing a boom in artificial intelligence, and home care providers are faced with questions about how and why they should use AI tools. Many already working in the field say the technology has the potential to transform home care, and stress that the best way to get started with AI is to start experimenting today.

“I’ve tried to tell people to be really experimental and willing to play with the technologies that are out there and do a little research,” said Jeff Salter, CEO of Caring Senior Service, McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse Wednesday in the interview.

San Antonio-based Caring Senior Service provides in-person care in about 50 locations across the U.S. The company recently began using AI to improve consistency and avoid communication breakdowns during phone calls.

“We serve 50 locations and have over 250 employees who could be answering the phone at any time. And on any one of those calls, a customer could be asking about our services and how staying home can benefit them,” Salter said. “Like most companies, we provide a lot of training on that. We try to make sure the people who answer the phones are doing a good job, but it’s really difficult – it’s almost impossible – to have those conversations with such a large workforce, and that’s a common problem.”

According to Salter, the solution was found in AI. Caring Senior Service began using the technology to filter, transcribe and summarize phone calls and then analyze whether staff greeted the caller properly, showed empathy during the conversation and offered services that met the caller’s needs. Finally, the AI ​​created an overall score of how well Caring Senior Service staff had helped the caller, Salter explained.

And while AI can be helpful in supporting customer-facing operations, providers can also use it to improve internal processes. In addition to improving interactions with new customers, Salter says AI has also made intra-office communications at Caring Senior Service more efficient.

However, the technology is not without its shortcomings and vendors should develop strategies to compensate for AI’s weaknesses, he said.

“(AI) still gets some things wrong,” Salter noted. “But we’ve made sure to put a human in the middle as often as possible. That way, nothing is customer-facing or done automatically without a human deciding, ‘Yeah, that looks good.'”

A look into the future

So what does the future hold for AI in home care? Salter believes many tasks will become much easier with the help of AI. He noted that scheduling in particular – a stressful and burnout-prone task for many home care agencies – can be turned into a much simpler task with AI support.

“I would say that a year from now, the planning process will require far less human involvement because of the data that is available to all of us,” Salter said.

First steps

Technology companies are already seeing home care as the next frontier of AI-powered development. Vivid Health, an AI-based clinical documentation platform, recently expanded into the home healthcare market. The company’s co-founder and CEO Patrick Mobley said home care providers should be curious in their search for AI extensions.

“Be curious, try it out and familiarize yourself with the possibilities – even outside the clinical context,” Mobley said on Wednesday in an interview with McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse“So when you’re trying to evaluate vendors or potential solutions, keep an open mind and be curious. But think about what problems you’re trying to solve, both from an internal perspective and from a patient outcomes perspective. If you can walk the line between the two, you’re going to have a really successful internal operation.”

The McKnight’s Tech Daily is an e-newsletter for the readers of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living And McKnight’s home care.