In the rapidly evolving landscape of nursing home management, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changing tool for operators. However, as with any disruptive technology, concerns and skepticism have surfaced, particularly regarding the use of AI-powered chat systems like ChatGPT.

In a recent panel discussion, three leaders from the senior care industry shared insights on the use of AI in nursing home management, operations, and clinical practices. AI has been shown to reduce costs and save time and resources, including in back-office operations, they said. Moreover, AI has empowered healthcare providers with data-driven insights, advanced decision support, and improved patient outcomes. But, AI has its limits.

The panel featured Dustin DiStefano, CEO of A Place at Home, who represented the home care sector; Nick Lindbergh, chief technology officer at HumanGood, who focused on senior housing; and, Rich Jolly, executive VP and chief information officer at Avenir, who gave insights on post-acute care. The talk centered around the applications of AI in the senior care field, and its potential to transform services in the industry.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an advanced language model released in 2020 by OpenAI. The tool has gained significant attention due to its remarkable language generation capabilities, and tendency to make mistakes.

ChatGPT is designed to process and understand natural language input, allowing it to generate human-like responses to text prompts.

While ChatGPT can be used for customer service interactions, content generation, language translation, natural language understanding, code generation, and other tasks, it is also prone to bias and limited to knowledge of world events after 2021.

Use in marketing and analytics

In private duty nursing and homecare services, DiStefano said that one of the key areas where language processing AI like ChatGPT has shown remarkable potential is in enhancing customer experience and streamlining sales efforts. AI can be deployed to enhance customer experience.

“On the private duty and homecare side of things, it’s really used for customer experience enhancements,” he said. “Obviously on our teams, we have sales and marketing divisions, right? What people need to know about AI – is it’s not automation, it’s augmentation. It’s not going to replace people…but it can save them hours of time and follow-ups, preparations, event planning, all types of things.”

DiStefano said that by automating routine tasks, AI-powered tools free up valuable time for sales and marketing divisions to build meaningful relationships with prospective clients. It allows them to focus on the most critical aspects of their role, such as personal interactions and understanding the unique needs of each individual.

“You can put in some numbers [on ChatGPT] to say if I spent $35,000 on marketing, and I produced $50,000 in revenue, what’s a good idea of my marketing spending?” he asked. “It will do all the math for you and analytics where a human person would have to usually go in and plug that into a calculator.”

However, he pointed out that there are concerns about AI-generated content’s accuracy and potential for “hallucination,” where the AI might fabricate information. This raises valid apprehensions about the reliability and trustworthiness of AI-generated responses, especially when dealing with sensitive topics such as senior care.

Yet he said that by employing keywords and providing clear instructions, users can manipulate the AI’s responses and obtain valuable information more efficiently. Moreover, when used thoughtfully and in conjunction with human oversight, ChatGPT can generate care plans and service proposals, saving considerable time and resources during the initial inquiry process.

Empowering clinical services with data-driven insights

In nursing home clinical services, AI’s impact has been profound, empowering healthcare providers with data-driven insights, advanced decision support, and improved patient outcomes. Machine learning, a subset of AI, plays a significant role in this domain, as it enables algorithms to learn from vast amounts of patient data and make accurate predictions.

Lindbergh said that AI’s potential in clinical decision-making is impressive; it can analyze patients’ medical histories, test results, and other relevant data to identify potential risks, predict adverse events, and recommend personalized treatment plans.

“It’s going to continue to be successful from a medical standpoint, especially as it comes down to things like scheduling nurses on rotations at hospitals, all the way from that to helping radiologists figure out if there is a tumor or not the tumor,” Lindbergh said.

This ability to process vast datasets and identify patterns that might escape human perception can significantly improve patient care. Yet Jolly said that the integration of AI into clinical services must be done thoughtfully.

AI should serve as a decision support tool rather than replacing human expertise entirely, he said. The human touch, empathy, and critical thinking remain irreplaceable in patient care.

“For example, for therapy decisions, even when supported by AI, you know, the therapist is making the final decision based on whatever the algorithm recommends,” he said.

Maximizing efficiency in back-office functions

Another area where AI is reshaping nursing home management is through maximizing efficiency in back-office functions. In senior care facilities, back-office tasks such as HR, legal, and finance, can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. AI and related technologies present innovative solutions to streamline these processes, freeing up valuable staff time for more strategic endeavors.

DiStefano said the implementation of AI in back-office functions can indeed yield significant benefits. Robotic Process Automation (RPA), for instance, can automate repetitive and rule-based tasks with precision and speed, reducing administrative burden and minimizing the risk of human error. AI can handle tasks such as generating routine financial reports, employee onboarding processes, and legal document reviews, thus saving time and resources.

“Now, is it perfect?” DiStefanohe asked. “No, you still gotta go through this stuff. And I would always suggest anybody using AI do not make this a replacement for communication to people.”

Jolly said that for nursing home facilities operating with a lean staff, smooth adoption and operation of AI solutions requires seamless compatibility with current software platforms. This ensures that AI implementation does not become a hindrance due to extensive integration projects.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities there,” DiStefano said. “So you know, things like robotic process automation have really helped in a lot of spaces in the back office.”