AI-Powered Digital Employee Prevents Automation Downtime for Hospitals

AI-Powered Digital Employee Prevents Automation Downtime for Hospitals

by | Oct 28, 2019 | Press Release

Olive Detects, Then Counteracts Workflow Interruptions 24/7

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 28, 2019 – Hospitals and healthcare systems continue adoption of new technologies as the industry seeks stronger data connectivity and the benefits of a more connected enterprise. While adoption of new technologies creates opportunities for greater efficiency and reduced costs, all too often new technology leaves hospitals faced with unexpected outages and disruptions that test the limits of IT departments. Hospital operations never stop, and technology must uphold the standards of 24/7, always-on uptime.  

Recognizing the criticality of continuous operations, Olive, an AI-powered digital employee built specifically for healthcare, is holding healthcare technology to a new standard with the introduction of Omega Watch, Olive’s internal intelligence center tasked with ongoing monitoring and performance management for the company’s customers. Equipped with intelligent alerts and predictions that draw on Olive’s collective performance data, the team behind the technology detects anomalies, prevents automation failures, and allows Olive to seamlessly adjust to workload and system changes. Designed to reduce the risk of automation downtime, the command center team keeps the digital workforce the company delivers running 24/7, ultimately driving efficiency, while helping customers avoid unexpected costs.

“Our healthcare system is inundated with data, making care more costly than ever for patients and providers. Automation is necessary to drive rapid efficiency that can – and will – revolutionize healthcare as we know it,” said Sean Lane, CEO of Olive. “Olive’s focus on performance management is critical to scaling a digital workforce, because healthcare doesn’t stop if we have a problem. Olive’s work must match the commitment of tireless healthcare workers.”

Today, many hospitals continue to utilize administrative employees as de facto data routers, an inefficient practice that contributes to rising costs and information silos. Adopting a digital workforce can help healthcare organizations mitigate this issue, while offering direct support to administrative employees by reducing monotonous, yet important tasks. A study by Ernst & Young reinforces the transformational value of RPA; however, it also cited the inherent difficulties that can be encountered without the right technology partner and approach. The introduction of Olive’s operation center is designed with these challenges in mind and supports Olive’s unwavering commitment to the efficiency and continuity of 24/7 healthcare operations.

With Omega Watch, Olive is uniquely poised to monitor and improve digital workforce performance for the healthcare industry. As Olive amasses data from her work over time, across a growing base of customers, she can anticipate planned upgrades or outages. Handling EMR upgrades, insurance portal changes, and third-party software maintenance with increasing precision, Omega Watch enables, identifies and takes preventive action across all customers who will be impacted. Olive simply detects and resolves an issue once, then applies a change for all providers to benefit. 

“Through our research, we have heard hospital leaders express the challenges they face with maintaining their growing technology stack. Downtime is detrimental to productivity and costs organizations the precious dollars and hours they intended to save when they invested in automation,” said Stephanie Kovalick, Chief Strategy Officer at Sage Growth Partners. “We found that 43 percent of healthcare executives preferred an AI delivery model that would build, deliver, monitor and support automations: an all-in-one technology offering.”

To learn more about Olive’s new internal intelligence center, visit www.oliveai.com/omegawatch.    

ABOUT OLIVE

Olive is deploying the first digital workforce built specifically for healthcare, automating healthcare’s most robotic processes, so human employees don’t have to. Olive delivers healthcare organizations improved efficiency and speed while reducing costly administrative errors. Using the systems an organization already has in place, Olive operates as a digital employee intelligently routing information and data between systems automating repetitive, high-volume tasks and workflows, providing true interoperability. Olive is proud to partner with more than 40 healthcare organizations made up of more than 500 hospitals in over 35 states across the country, ranging from some of the nation’s top health systems to small regional hospitals.  

Frequently Asked Questions About Olive At Becker’s HIT + Revenue Cycle Conference 2019

Frequently Asked Questions About Olive At Becker’s HIT + Revenue Cycle Conference 2019

by | Oct 16, 2019 | Healthcare

We’re back at Olive HQ after an amazing few days at Becker’s HIT + Revenue Cycle Conference, and we have to say, this was our favorite year yet. We had the chance to talk to over 300 leading healthcare executives at the Olive booth, and we’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions to help you better understand how Olive is transforming the future of healthcare with AI.

Q: Will AI take healthcare jobs?  

One ongoing conversation about the implementation of AI stems from the fear and trepidation about whether or not AI will take human jobs. But that’s not what AI should be doing at all – AI is automating the robotic tasks bogging down our most inundated industries, so humans can focus on more meaningful, human-centric initiatives such as patient care. For example, in healthcare today, workers spend more time in front of screens than they do in front of patients – a real problem that AI can effectively solve. 

At Olive, we’ve already seen the workforce landscape fundamentally changing because AI and automation are being used to supplement the work that human employees don’t have time to get to. We call it “Shiftwork” because it’s the trajectory through which our jobs as human employees will evolve over time to more meaningful tasks with the assistance of AI. For instance, at one hospital that hired Olive, employees that previously spent their days checking claim statuses now work on quality assurance and other tasks that are more suited for a human. 

Q: How does Olive go beyond RPA? How/where is AI actually used? 

An AI-powered digital workforce goes beyond traditional RPA in three very important ways: 

  1. Not all automations a digital employee does can be performed by a RPA or a human – in many cases, a digital employee uses AI-powered deep learning techniques to accomplish far more complex tasks. 
  2. Unlike a static RPA bot, a digital workforce can learn and adapt to change their work based on new intelligence.
  3. A digital employee interacts with their managers to provide business intelligence and recommendations on improved ways to handle tasks, so they continue to generate value long after deployment. 

As you begin your journey with AI, starting with workflows that leverage less complex technologies such as Robotic Process Automation and Computer Vision provides value and return on investment quickly and helps lay a solid foundation for your long term AI strategy. That’s because, while RPA can quickly and accurately process large volumes of data, AI-powered digital employees layer artificial cognition on top of an automation, using that data to make decisions or take action with cognitive “thinking” involved.

To learn more about how Olive goes beyond RPA, read CEO Sean Lane’s perspective on the topic here.

 

Q: How do you think about vendor selection? 

Going live with your first AI or automation project should be a step towards a longer term AI strategy. And in a time when nearly every technology vendor is touting AI-enabled products and pilot programs, it can be difficult to determine which vendor is invested in your organization’s long term success. As you go into the implementation process, work with your vendor’s team to ensure all stakeholders understand the technology and level of commitment and engagement required for successful custom development of your AI technology.

Here are just a few of the key questions to ask potential vendors to help you take an impact-driven approach to AI implementation:

1) How much experience does the vendor(s) have in health systems or in healthcare?
2) What is their approach for putting healthcare data security first?
3) What is their previous experience as a partner and trusted advisor?

No two healthcare organizations are the same. And because the challenges healthcare workers face are unique – like complex software integrations, overburdened staff, shrinking margins and increasingly strict security and compliance requirements – the industry needs an AI solution made specifically for them. Read more about what to look for in the right AI & automation vendor in this full article.

Q: What are your primary use cases? How many hospitals are you deployed in?

Olive is proud to partner with more than 40 healthcare organizations made up of more than 500 hospitals, handling tasks that are high-volume and error-prone. Although Olive has deep experience and expertise in the revenue cycle, she frequently works in information technology (IT), supply chain, human resources and more!  Here are just a few of Olive’s common roles: 

  • Benefit & Verification Discovery
  • Prior Authorization Management
  • Denial & Rejection Management
  • Vendor Contract Management
  • Invoice Processing
  • Inventory Management
  • Periodic Reporting

To learn more about Olive, visit Our Solution.

 

Q: How do you price?

Olive is the only healthcare-specific artificial intelligence solution sold as a service (AIaaS) – that means one annual subscription price and an all-in-one approach to increased efficiency and improved revenue. The simplest way to think of Olive is as a digital employee – she earns an annual salary, completes a defined and pre-agreed upon job, and is expected to not only perform, but excel. 

We created AIaaS because we think the current purchasing model for AI is broken. Before AIaaS, if an organization wanted to use AI to automate something, they had to worry about licensing fees, software purchases, consultants, integrators, implementation costs, support, maintenance – not to mention the internal resources needed to manage it. And if the software they’re automating changes, or if business rules change, the customer is on the hook to pay more money to consultants and integrators to get everything working again, making it difficult to calculate the true cost and ROI of AI investments they’re considering. 

 

Q: How much involvement from my internal resources are required? 

Even when implementing a new software could be extremely beneficial in the long run, the resources required can sometimes be shocking. That’s why Olive is ushering in a new approach to technology integration – one that significantly lessens the burden on employees and resources across all departments.

When you hire Olive, our team at Olive HQ will work with you to identify the scope of work and jobs that she will complete (taking lessons from all the other Olives we have deployed at healthcare organizations similar to yours).  Next, our team will train her across those processes, ensuring she’s fully functional before she starts full time. Once live, she works autonomously to manage her ongoing responsibilities, automating routine, high-volume, error-prone tasks. Because an organization’s commitment to this work is critical to Olive’s success, during this process, there are normally two to four stakeholders being kept in the loop on Olive’s progress as four to eight subject matter experts help inform the work that Olive will be taking over. 

Q: Can I have those Olive socks?

Sorry, the Olive merch isn’t for sale… yet.

Olive AI Merch at Becker’s HIT + Revenue Cycle Conference

Olive Wins Best in Healthcare Artificial Intelligence at AI DevWorld’s AI TechAwards

Olive Wins Best in Healthcare Artificial Intelligence at AI DevWorld’s AI TechAwards

by | Oct 10, 2019 | Healthcare, Press Release

Olive’s digital employee recognized as top innovator in the AI ecosystem

Coming off the heels of landmark growth and adoption at over 500 hospitals throughout 2019, Olive was just honored with the Best in Healthcare AI award at AI DevWorld’s 2019 AI TechAwards!

Olive was chosen from hundreds of nominees by the AI TechAwards advisory board based on three criteria: attracting notable attention and awareness in the field of AI; general regard and use by the development and technology community; and being an innovation leader in its respective category.

The company’s win at the AI TechAwards comes on the tail-end of a monumental year for Olive. Earlier this year, Olive announced its integration with Clinc, a conversational AI solution that frees up time and resources for administration in healthcare. And in September, Olive reported rapid growth in its customer base and professional team, with plans to triple business from the year prior.

“Continuing to innovate and bring new AI-powered solutions to customers is our number one priority,” said Olive CEO Sean Lane. “We’re on a mission to automate healthcare’s most costly, high-volume tasks, and this award is evidence of how far we’ve come in transforming the industry with AI – we have no plans to slow down.”

The awards were presented at AI DevWorld’s annual conference taking place from October 8-10, 2019 at the San Jose Convention Center located in San Jose, California. AI DevWorld is the largest Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Data Science conference with tracks covering Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Open Source AI, AI for the Enterprise, Deep AI, and Neural Networks, among other topics.

Olive is among fifteen other AI industry leaders honored with an award from AI DevWorld in categories such as Healthcare AI, AI-as-a-Service, Consumer AI, and Enterprise AI. The full list of this year’s award recipients can be viewed here. To learn more about Olive’s solution, check out Our Solution page.

Half of hospital decision makers plan to invest in AI by 2021, study shows

Half of hospital decision makers plan to invest in AI by 2021, study shows

by | Aug 6, 2019 | Press Release

Hospitals realize AI’s market value, seeking to drive efficiency and reduce cost

COLUMBUS OH, August 7, 2019 — The cost of healthcare is increasing, due in part to breakthroughs in patient care, including advancements in medical treatments and clinical technologies. However, the digitization of healthcare and the complexities of reimbursement are fundamentally changing the way hospital data is managed, adding new layers of administrative processes. The result: increasing operational expenses across hospitals and health systems.

A recent study conducted by Olive AI explores how hospital leaders are responding to the imperative to drive efficiency and reduce costs through strategic investments in non-clinical technologies. The study audits the state of adoption and investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA), and found that:

 

We are Still in the Early Stages of AI Adoption in Healthcare
  • Only 50% of hospital leaders interviewed said they were familiar with the concept of AI/RPA
  • More than half of hospital leaders were unable to name an AI/RPA vendor or solution
  • 23% of hospital leaders are looking to invest in AI/RPA today, while half plan to do so by 2021
  • Those familiar with AI/RPA are two times as likely to implement AI to solve workflow challenges instead of leveraging existing systems

With an estimated $1 trillion of healthcare spending going toward administrative costs (labor being the largest component), hospital leaders are starting to look expansively at technology that improves efficiency across the enterprise.

Familiarity and Understanding of AI Impacts Decision-Making
  • Purchasing approaches vary. 43% of hospital leaders preferred to choose a company to build, deliver, monitor and support automations, 26% preferred to choose the platform themselves, then hire consultants to build their solution, 18% preferred to choose the platform themselves and have their employees build the solution, and 13% preferred to hire consultants to both choose the platform and build the solution
  • Meanwhile, improving efficiency and reducing costs remains a top three priority (behind improving quality of care and improving patient satisfaction/engagement) 
  • Executives see high growth potential in automating high-volume, repetitive tasks in these functions: supply chain management, revenue cycle management, finance and human resources

“As an industry, healthcare is united by a mission to deliver better patient care, and a huge barrier to delivering that promise is the challenge that 1 in every 3 dollars is spent on administrative expenses. Imagine what could be done if more resources were available to focus on patient care,” said Rebecca Hellmann, Chief Marketing Officer of Olive. “With AI becoming more mainstream and offering a clearer path to value, hospitals no longer need to build out a massive technological infrastructure before benefiting from the efficiencies that it can create.”

Olive conducted this survey in partnership with Sage Growth Partners, an independent healthcare market research, consulting and marketing firm. The survey respondents included 115 executives spanning the roles of chief financial officers, chief information officers, revenue cycle managers and supply chain functional leaders at hospital systems and independent hospitals in the United States. 

To learn more about Olive, visit www.oliveai.com.

 

ABOUT OLIVE

Olive is deploying the first digital workforce built specifically for healthcare, automating healthcare’s most robotic processes, so human employees don’t have to. Olive delivers healthcare organizations improved efficiency and speed while reducing costly administrative errors. Using the systems an organization already has in place, Olive operates as a digital employee intelligently routing information and data between systems automating repetitive, high-volume tasks and workflows, providing true interoperability. Olive is proud to partner with more than 60 healthcare organizations made up of more than 550 hospitals in over 35 states across the country, ranging from some of the nation’s top health systems to small regional hospitals.

Employing an AI-Powered Digital Employee: A Health System’s & Vendor’s Perspective

Employing an AI-Powered Digital Employee: A Health System’s & Vendor’s Perspective

by | Jul 19, 2019 | Healthcare, Innovation

On May 21, Becker’s Hospital Review hosted a webinar, Employing an AI-Powered Digital Employee: A Health System’s & Vendor’s Perspective, sponsored by Olive: a technology company who delivers AI-powered digital employees to healthcare organizations. The webinar was led by Susan Whitecotton, Vice President of Patient Financial Services at MedStar Health, and Braden Lambros, Executive Director of AI Transformation at Olive. 

Watch the Full Webinar?

During the session, MedStar shared their story of employing Olive’s digital workforce. Both speakers gave their perspectives and insights on:

  1. How AI can address hospital’s biggest challenges
  2. The differentiators of a digital workforce
  3. Effective ways to lead an AI transformation program within your organization
  4. How to navigate the vendor selection process
  5. The outcomes of hiring a digital workforce

Here are the top five questions answered during the webinar.

How do I determine if AI and automation is right for my organization?

A host of internal challenges, industry challenges and pressing needs are constantly putting pressure on hospitals to do more with less, all while improving performance. For MedStar, those challenges led the organization to pursue cutting edge technologies to support their revenue cycle transformation. Like many health systems, some specific issues the organization faced included:

  • Separate financial systems versus their clinicals
  • Registration accuracy
  • Staffing / Turnover / Training
  • Frequent payer changes that have led to financial performance issues
  • Pressing needs that bubbled back up to the revenue cycle

As the team at MedStar investigated solutions, AI and automation emerged as an ideal fit to concur many of the repetitive, rule-based and error prone processes that were driving critical revenue cycle functions.

What is a digital workforce?

 A digital workforce, or digital employee is enabled by combining automation and artificial intelligence technologies in tandem to automate error prone, inefficient tasks. When hiring a digital employee it’s often easiest to think of the technologies as you would a human counterpart. Robotic Process Automation handles many of the tasks that hands would tackle, logging into and out of systems and entering data manually. Computer Vision is leveraged as the eyes, reading, scanning and recognizing critical items on a page — transcribing documents and images that are critical to standard business processes in a health system. While Machine Learning is defined as a digital employee’s ability to make contextual decisions about and within processes, truly mimicking human decision making.

How should I go about leading an AI and automation initiative within my hospital?

According to Susan, pulling together the right people, having the right conversations and aligning on the right execution model are essential for leading a successful program. She advised those considering leading their own AI initiative to:

  • Get the right stakeholders involved early
  • Have a project champion
  • Create a staffing augmentation strategy and communication plan
  • Call on internal teams to contribute to the discovery process
  • Lean into an agile execution model

What criteria should I consider when seeking an AI and automation partner?

When engaging in vendor partnership selection, Susan advised beginning with the end in mind. By doing proper research and understanding her KPIs before seeking a vendor, MedStar was aligned on critical indicators of success and set clear expectations on how success would be measured. By conducting site visits and reference calls with other health systems already benefiting from AI and automation, the team was able to validate their vendor criteria.

Vendors were evaluated on the following criteria:

  • Had a process and approach to achieve required results
  • Had deep experience in the revenue cycle (someone who spoke a hospital’s language)
  • Had an understanding of healthcare’s unique security challenges
  • Would go beyond being a vendor; they would be a true partner

“We went through a formal selection process and found that Olive not only brought the revenue cycle expertise, but more importantly, they brought innovation and talent with an enthusiastic team that blended very well with our culture. This was very important to introduce change and deliver a successful outcome,” Susan said.

How do I determine where to begin?

As a vendor partner, Olive often is asked, “Where do I get started?”. It can seem daunting, and that’s where you should rely on your vendor to guide you. Braden explained prioritization should be aligned with processes that will deliver quick wins with big impacts.  By tackling those challenges first, your organization can build quick success, establish internal buy-in needed across teams to continue to tackle more complex process challenges. It’s best to start by listing business process that are repetitive, high-volume, rule-based and often prone to human error.

Ideal candidates for automation will meet each of those criteria. Your vendor will then determine which automations can be built and deployed quickly (30-60-90 days from the time work begins) and support your team in defining prioritization against business results, such as increased efficiency or accuracy.

What outcomes are expected when hiring a digital workforce?

Strategically planned programs with thorough scoping, strong communication (internal and external) and clear key performance indicators, organizations produce quick wins that demonstrate immediate process improvements, along with long-term economic impacts that help achieve desired financial results.

For Susan and her team, in six months since initial go-live, Olive’s digital workforce has:

  • Logged 1,300 hours of productive work
  • Completed more than 23 million actions
  • Delivered cost savings of more than 50 percent compared to prior processes.

Two other quick wins for MedStar were in the Electronic Insurance Eligibility Verification process and ERA remittance posting. In Eligibility Verification, Olive was live in 22 days, and now completes the process 5 to 7 times faster than a human employee could. And in ERA remittance posting, Olive has taken over 90% of the process, allowing staff to shift focus to other important tasks. Hiring a digital workforce also allowed previously untouched work to be addressed. In patient status transfers, limited resources meant Susan’s team was only able to manage inpatient to outpatient charge capture corrections (leaving outpatient to inpatient unaddressed). Olive now runs both processes (more than 1,100 charge corrections per day), giving the organization the opportunity to realize more revenue.

“[Employing a digital workforce] has been an exciting journey thus far. Our team has been excited to learn new things and we’re really looking forward to seeing a significant impact in the long run,” said Susan.

With many phases of their revenue cycle transformation still to come, MedStar’s digital workforce and the process efficiencies and financial impacts that come with it has just begun.

Want to learn more about how Olive is transforming this health system with AI? Catch the entire webinar here.