AI as a hospital patient sitter? Yes, it's real and it's here
Also: Healthcare wages are rising but strikes and labor unrest persist [because the industry's problems go far beyond salary dissatisfaction]
In this edition:
More generative AI in clinical settings (part 2; check out part 1 here)
Higher wages is hitting employers and not making a dent in labor shortages or unrest
Clinical providers don’t have a lot of faith that any significant relief for understaffing is coming soon
How one healthcare network is using AI to ease nurses’ workloads and allow them to focus on higher-order tasks — and cut expenses by millions
Kaiser, labor leaders reach tentative deal
Since last week’s 3-day strike — the largest in U.S. history with 75K healthcare workers walking off their jobs at Kaiser Permanente facilities in six states — not much progress has been reported in negotiations until this morning: the San Diego Union-Tribune and Becker’s Hospital Review are reporting that Kaiser and union leaders have reached a tentative deal.
The workers who walked off the job to strike — members of the SEIU-UHW union — represent a variety of hospital positions including nursing, EMTs, lab techs, optometrists and many other hospital support staffers, comprising about 40% of the health system’s workforce, according to CNN.
The union has been fighting for raises to keep up with inflation and a fix for labor shortages. One emergency medicine tech from a Kaiser Permanente hospital in California said they usually have just five to seven EMTs on staff in their 85-bed emergency room, which should have a minimum of 15 on duty.
The unions had already begun planning a second, longer strike for the entire first week of November.
It’s no magic solution to workforce shortages, but higher wages are showing up across healthcare orgs
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal and Becker’s report that hospital staff wages are on the rise — and they’re likely to continue rising as labor unrest grows in the healthcare sector.
Hospital worker wages rose an average of 3.8% in the last quarter, and strikes coupled with policy pushes for higher minimum wages and staffing standards are likely to drive those average wages higher.
A few other large healthcare employers attempting to negotiate around strikes include HCA Healthcare, which “was able to avoid a strike at five California facilities by renegotiating labor contracts that included a 15% wage increase over three years,” Becker’s reported. HCA Healthcare said it spent 7.1% more on salaries and benefits in 2023 Q2 compared to the same period last year.
Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare said it spent 7.5% more in Q2 — yet the higher spending on salaries has not curbed the threat of a strike across its facilities, according to the reports.
On Becker’s list of the 23 largest healthcare employers in the U.S., nearly all show that their salaries/benefits expenses rose in the second quarter.
‘Burned out leaders leading burned out teams’
How do clinicians feel about the healthcare sector’s staffing outlook?
Not great. Becker’s ran a poll on LinkedIn last month, and half of the respondents said they’re "not at all" hopeful about the progress being made regarding staffing issues.
Feedback from survey respondents included calls for more leadership involvement, educational changes, and shifts in scope of practice as “necessary to move the needle.” (We see what you did there… *nods head in approval*)
One Registered Nurse said: "Nursing schools also need to teach students differently to handle the demands of the job, self-care, how to authentically connect and communicate within the team. Burned out leaders are leading burned out teams."
The staffing crisis is hitting the VA, too
The VA has hired more people in a shorter period of time over the past year than ever in its history; it recently announced surpassing the 400K employee mark, also a new record.
And yet, it is still critically understaffed, USMedicine.com writes.
The VA Office of Inspector General recently reported that VA facilities have “3,118 severe occupational staffing shortages across 282 occupations.” Those numbers mean the staff shortages are worse than at any time in the VA’s history — including during the pandemic.
New tech, who dis? AI used as ‘sitter’ for fall-risk patients
Since the public introduction of ChatGPT last year, we’ve heard a lot of discussions about ways generative AI could reduce human workloads in healthcare administrative work — and we’ve recently read about various AI-powered platforms being implemented for patient record-keeping, for provider note-taking in clinical settings, for scheduling, for billing, and more.
Now, AI can sit with patients.
Guthrie Clinic, a network with about 100 locations serving rural areas in New York and Pennsylvania, explains in a new Healthcare IT News report how it is using AI-powered software connected to “smart” hardware to cut nurse turnover in half, save over $7M the first year (by reducing their reliance signing bonuses and travel nurses), and improve nurse satisfaction.
It began with a critical shortage of so-called patient sitters, hospital staff who sit 1-to-1 with patients who cannot be unsupervised because they’re a high fall risk if they get out of bed on their own.
Implementing an AI-powered software-plus-hardware platform, Guthrie Clinic changed to a “virtual sitting model to make the ratio 1-to-14, so now one sitter (working virtually) can safely monitor 14 patients,” the report says.
"This project did not include just adding a camera and speaker to the room, but that hardware sat on top of the AI-driven platform," a Guthrie spokeswoman told Healthcare IT News. "If a patient moves around the room, the AI technology in the camera alerts the tele-sitter there is activity in the room that requires intervention. The tele-sitter can interact directly with the patient or call an on-site nurse for assistance.”
The program has expanded into a "virtual command center" that is not attached to any hospital and allows staff to check the pulse of the organization. “The center has virtual sitting, centralized transfer center, virtual telemetry monitoring, virtual nursing, and an EICU component. That was established in the last year and the organization is planning to grow the services in the future,” Healthcare IT News noted.
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