AI technology, including machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and generative AI (GenAI), is becoming increasingly integral to hospital operations. It addresses critical healthcare needs and helps facilities run more smoothly. From streamlining HR processes to advancing applications in surgery, AI offers powerful tools to improve operations, patient care, and resource usage. In this guide, we explore specific applications for AI in hospitals, building on our series on AI in healthcare.
1. Streamlining Human Resources
Hospital HR departments face unique challenges, from managing the hiring process for skilled staff to ensuring the correct administrative protocols are followed. GenAI significantly streamlines these HR tasks, handling labor-intensive processes such as pre-hire due diligence and comprehensive background verification, which are crucial in healthcare settings. AI helps standardize and expedite the onboarding and offboarding processes, saving time and resources that would otherwise be spent on paperwork.
Beyond hiring, AI helps manage access control for various hospital areas, ensuring employees have the right permissions based on their roles. Automation reduces the manual workload, mitigates human error, and enhances hospital security. AI’s role in HR facilitates day-to-day tasks and allows teams to focus on more strategic and interpersonal initiatives that improve hospital culture and employee satisfaction, which are essential for maintaining quality patient care and preventing staff burnout.
2. Enhancing Insurance Authorization and Appeals
In hospitals, the prior authorization process can be both time-consuming and resource-intensive, delaying necessary treatments and frustrating patients and providers alike. GenAI optimizes this process by using large language models to analyze and interpret medical policies, thereby assisting in quick approvals and reducing delays. An AI-driven approach allows hospitals to streamline insurance operations, leading to fewer claim denials, increased revenues, and improved patient experiences.
Another area where GenAI is impactful is automating the creation of appeal letters. By understanding the nuances of payer policies and denial reasons, AI can generate appeals that address specific issues and provide required documentation, which may otherwise cause claim rejections. For hospitals, even minor improvements in denial rates can significantly affect operations, care quality, patient satisfaction, and healthcare provider morale.
3. Improving Patient Flow and Bed Management
Hospital bed shortages can create substantial challenges, especially in high-demand areas like the emergency room. Patients waiting for appropriate beds or specialty care often experience extended wait times, leading to overcrowded ERs and decreased patient satisfaction. GenAI helps hospitals manage these issues by predicting demand, estimating length of stay, and expediting transfer and discharge processes. The predictive capabilities allow hospitals to maintain transparency around bed availability and anticipate patient flow needs, significantly improving capacity management.
Through AI-driven insights, hospitals can identify potential bottlenecks and manage patient discharge prioritization, improving the overall efficiency of patient transitions. The results include better throughput and fewer barriers to accessing necessary care, with AI proactively addressing and prioritizing actions to improve flow and reduce wait times.
4. Leveraging AI in Robotic Surgery
AI has revolutionized robotic surgery, especially through advancements in real-time metrics and enhanced intraoperative data. AI-powered surgical tools can now provide surgeons with tactile feedback, force measurements, and even detect boundaries within surgical sites to avoid unintended damage. These capabilities enhance the precision and efficiency of complex surgeries, minimizing risks and promoting faster recovery times.
GenAI is also transforming surgical training. Through intraoperative video feeds and real-time data analysis, AI generates automated skill assessments for surgeons and provides specialized feedback during surgery. This can be particularly beneficial for training new surgeons, who can learn and improve based on precise, AI-generated metrics. While AI-driven robotic surgery holds immense promise, like all AI applications, it raises important ethical considerations, including the need for frameworks that responsibly and ethically guide AI integration.
5. Improving Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems
EHR systems play a vital role in hospital operations and patient care. AI enhances EHRs by integrating generative models that assist healthcare providers in multiple ways, including drafting personalized responses to patient messages, summarizing nursing hand-offs, and creating visit summaries with embedded links to full details in charts. These tools allow doctors and nurses to focus more on patients rather than documentation, improving both patient engagement and provider productivity.
Notably, Epic Systems, a leader in EHR software, has embraced GenAI, enabling the features detailed above, assisting clinicians in completing administrative responsibilities promptly, and freeing up time to spend at the bedside. By automating the documentation process, AI in EHRs improves efficiency, provider satisfaction, and patient care quality, making this one of the most impractical AI applications in hospitals today.
6. Navigating Generative AI for Hospitals with Encora
At Encora, we specialize in leveraging data, insights, and AI to support healthcare enterprises and digital-native health tech companies. From diagnostics to regulatory compliance, we provide AI solutions tailored to the unique needs of healthcare organizations. Our offerings include precision medicine, supply chain optimization, telehealth, and population health management–each designed to meet the industry’s rigorous security, compliance, and quality standards.
To learn more about GenAI in healthcare, read our blogs:
By choosing Encora as your partner in digital transformation, hospitals can improve patient care and engagement while optimizing clinical trials, streamlining connected health initiatives, and ensuring data privacy and regulatory adherence. Talk to one of our experts today to see how our healthcare solutions can create value for your hospital, staff, and patients while cutting operational costs.
