The healthcare AI market is moving fast with new advancements and products being announced every week. Stay up-to-date with the latest news with these quick hits.
Monday, Oct. 13
Health IT company athenahealth launched AI-native updates to its revenue cycle management and practice management capabilities.
The company is embedding agentic AI directly into athenaOne at no extra cost, the company said in a press release.
Athenahealth provides electronic health records software, revenue cycle management and patient engagement solutions to small and independent provider practices. The company also is building out a suite of AI tools for ambulatory providers.
In August, athenahealth executives told Fierce Healthcare the company was soon rolling out AI features for ambulatory providers as part of a larger upgrade to an "AI-native" athenaOne platform. The aim is to provide a "reimagined user experience" for physician practices across key functions like interoperability, patient engagement, clinical documentation and revenue cycle management, the company said back in August.
The AI features will streamline practice operations from the front to the back office, including automated insurance selection and AI agents that improve the speed and quality of prior authorizations and claims processing, the company said.
The company said it is making AI part of its core infrastructure, not an add-on. The AI features will help reduce manual work and get providers paid faster, executives said.
“Curing complexity across the revenue cycle has always been core to athenahealth. Rapid advances in AI, coupled with our decades of experience are enabling us to make another transformative leap in reducing customer workload and improving revenue cycle outcomes for our practices,” said Paul Brient, chief product and operations officer at athenahealth, in a statement.
“Our AI-native, cloud-based co-sourcing model will yield revenue cycle results that were unimaginable only a year ago – clean claim rates at nearly 99%, time to bill in low single digit days, and assurance that our practices receive every dollar that they should. We can do all this while also wicking away half of the work our practices have historically done," Brient said.
More than 160,000 practicing ambulatory physicians use athenahealth's technology, and the company says it processes 315 million claims annually, representing $45 billion, through its athenaOne platform.
The company says its AI-powered billing solution results in fewer manual tasks (70% less work), cleaner claims (98.4%), faster payments (78% patient pay yield), and only 5.7% median denial rate (compared to greater than 10% industry average).
Athenahealth executives said in August that new AI-native capabilities include AI-enhanced document services, interoperability tools and intelligent clinical summaries. Other upgrades in the works include AI-native features for clinical workflow, revenue cycle and patient engagement.
The company previewed its new AI features just ahead of EHR giant Epic's annual User Group Meeting, also in August, where the company unveiled its AI innovations. Oracle also recently launched its next-gen EHR equipped with the latest AI and voice capabilities.
Friday, Oct. 10
Microsoft rolls out AI-based claims denial tool for rural hospitals
Tech giant Microsoft launched a claims denial navigator, a free, AI-powered tool that aims to help streamline the resolution process for insurance claims.
Microsoft Partners and rural health organizations developed the tool as part of the company's Rural Health AI Innovation Lab (RHAIL).
Microsoft says the tool can help hospitals handle denied claims more efficiently and receive appropriate reimbursement for their services. It is now available on GitHub for any healthcare provider, from small rural clinics to large urban health systems, Microsoft said.
A recent study noted that more than 700 rural hospitals across the United States are currently at risk of closure due to financial hardship. While many denied claims are eventually approved, the average cost of managing them for a small hospital is estimated at $330,000 annually. The process of resolving these claims consumes precious time and resources, slows cash flow and inflates administrative costs. Statistical analysis shows that rural hospitals have a denial rate of 18%, far higher than the 10% rate for urban hospitals.
The claims denial navigator streamlines resolution processes for denied Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurance claims. The tool also offers recommendations for the most effective actions billing staff can take to resolve denied claims and learns from their actions and feedback to improve its recommendations over time.
Microsoft is partnering with the Texas Office of Rural Clinics and Hospitals as it supports its members in deploying and measuring success of the claims denial navigator, Microsoft said. The Washington State Hospital Association also is supporting access to the resource for its hospital members.
Notable launches conversational AI assistant for workflow automation
Healthcare AI platform Notable developed Flow AI as a conversational assistant embedded in its low-code platform, Flow Builder interface.
The AI assistant is designed to help healthcare teams automate faster and with less friction, according to the company. Healthcare organizations can use it to design, debug and optimize AI Agent workflows.
Flow Builder is Notable’s low-code interface for designing, customizing and deploying AI-powered workflows. Notable developed Flow AI to make it even easier to build in Flow Builder. Key features of Flow AI include conversational automation building to create, edit and understand workflows with natural language command and reusable patterns and intelligent suggestions, from generating filters for lab results to merging multiple data inputs, according to the company.
And, Flow AI can interpret workflows in context, offering clear explanations and guidance without requiring users to parse documentation or consult support channels.
Incredible Health debuts voice AI agents for healthcare workers
Incredible Health, a healthcare staffing platform, developed two AI voice agents, called Gale and Lyn, to help healthcare workers and employers in the hiring process.
Healthcare workers can use Gale to refine their resumes, prepare for interviews and find opportunities they may not have otherwise considered, according to the company. Incredible Health says that the AI voice agent has been used by 1 million U.S. healthcare workers on Incredible Health’s marketplace.
Gale is trained on data from millions of real career paths on the Incredible Health marketplace and has been trained to understand the nuances between specialties and care settings, such as med-surg, ICU, and ambulatory care, Incredible Health claims. More than 90% of nurses using Gale give it positive reviews and state they would recommend it to peers, the company said.
Lyn was designed as an AI copilot for healthcare employers. Healthcare organizations can use Lyn as an AI voice interview agent for personalized outreach to candidates and to conduct interviews.
The AI voice agent was built in collaboration with Johns Hopkins, NYPresbyterian, Baylor Scott & White Health and Sutter Health and trained on millions of hiring interactions from Incredible Health’s career marketplace, the company said.