Cognitive Technologies Will Reduce Hospital Readmissions
Hospitals are facing hundreds of millions in penalties for readmissions, and they are trying coding gimmicks to avoid these. Instead, it's time send a nurse home with every discharge.
An article by Lucette Lagnado in T
The next day in the Journal, the first page contained an article by
About
Hospitals are desperate to reduce readmissions and both articles in the Journal contained ideas on how to reduce readmissions... but one resulted in improved care, the other only clouded the issue.
The use of video and audio recordings are useful tools, as the first article discussed, and may actually make a small difference, but there is a need for a more comprehensive approach—
I propose that the next generation of solutions will incorporate cognitive solutions in the form of specialized
By allowing the artificial intelligence/natural language powered VHA to access data from "wearables" and connected devices, as well as the hospital discharge instructions, prescription instructions, and prescribed lifestyle changes, the agent could, using motivational interviewing, encourage people with chronic illness recently discharged from the hospital to adhere with the numerous instructions and track, in real time, response to therapy as well as adherence to the treatment plan—basically creating a virtual nurse that accompanies each patient home.
Of course, the VHA could detect variance from prescribed therapy and escalate the issues to the hospital and physicians involved as needed and provide a video bridge to the caregivers as needed with a so-called virtual visit.
It seems counter intuitive that hospitals would walk away from what trends to become a half a billion dollars when an VHA could be built for the cost of just the salary of a handful of nurses. Once built, these agents are infinitely scalable and would continue to grow in knowledge, scope, breadth and utility.
The technology is ready and hospitals have a compelling need and have tried accounting gimmicks. Who will be the visionary to try a real solution?
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