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Oct 17, 2024

Generative AI can ease administrative burden in healthcare

Oct 17, 2024 [[read-time]] min read A new report from Google Cloud and The Harris Poll shows healthcare’s administrative burdens are piling up — but generative AI can help. Did you know that doctors

Oct 17, 2024

[[read-time]] min read

A new report from Google Cloud and The Harris Poll shows healthcare’s administrative burdens are piling up — but generative AI can help.

Did you know that doctors and nurses spend over a third of their time on paperwork? This administrative burden contributes to burnout, staffing shortages, and reduced patient care time. However, there's a promising solution: generative AI (gen AI). Healthcare professionals are open to using gen AI to ease their administrative workloads, and the general public supports it too. Gen AI can help by making it easier to search patient documents, create clinical documents, get prior authorizations approved faster, and speed up turnaround times in medical imaging. By easing administrative burdens, AI can pave the way to a more efficient, accurate, and human-centered healthcare system.

How gen AI can help doctors and nurses ease their administrative workloads

Doctors and nurses spend too much time doing paperwork and not enough time with patients.

Generative AI (gen AI) can help by making it easier to search patient documents, create clinical documents, get prior authorizations approved faster, and speed up turnaround times in medical imaging.

Healthcare professionals and the general public are open to using gen AI to ease administrative burdens.

Gen AI can support healthcare professionals, allowing them to focus more on people, not paperwork.

Did you know doctors and nurses spend more than a third of their work week on paperwork? This includes maintaining detailed patient records, completing insurance forms and referrals, documenting procedures performed, organizing documentation for claims and inputting claim information into the system. A study published today by Google Cloud and The Harris Poll sheds light on the extent of this burden — and it also highlights how generative AI (gen AI) can help.

Clinicians, including doctors and nurses in the United States, report that nearly 28 hours of each week are lost to administrative tasks, leaving less time for what truly matters: patient care. It's no wonder that 82% of clinicians report feeling burned out. This isn't just a doctor problem: Insurance staff face an even bigger mountain of paperwork, spending 36 hours a week on administrative duties, such as maintaining member records and compiling documentation for claims.

This administrative overload is contributing to many of healthcare’s biggest challenges:

However, there is a promising solution to help with many of these tasks: gen AI. The study found that healthcare professionals are open to using generative AI, with 91% of providers and 97% of payors saying they feel positively about AI’s potential to ease administrative burdens. The general public feels the same, with 72% of respondents saying using AI is a worthwhile way to allow their healthcare providers more time to talk to them. Here are a few ways gen AI can help:

While AI can’t replace human compassion and expertise in healthcare, it can support healthcare professionals, allowing them to focus more on people, not paperwork. By easing administrative burdens, AI can pave the way to a more efficient, accurate, and human-centered system where the needs of patients are always at the forefront.