Meaningful AI

by Rowan Report | Apr 24, 2025 | Admin, Artificial Intelligence, Caring for the Caregiver

by Scott Green, Care Dimensions at Netsmart

Meaningful AI in Post-Acute

Elevating Care and Efficiency with Integrated AI

Meaningful AI is more than plugging your questions into ChatGPT. It goes beyond Artificial Intelligence into Augmented Intelligence.

After a long day of caring for patients, a home health nurse pulls into their driveway, bracing for the familiar evening grind — hours of documentation. They take a deep breath, one of relief. They’re not mentally preparing for hours at their laptop, documenting every visit, trying to recall every detail while fatigue tugs at their focus. Tonight is different.

Tonight, they step through the door, greeted by their kids clamoring to show off their school projects. Dinner is already on the table, and for the first time in weeks, they sit with their family—truly present. There’s no need to pull out the laptop after dessert, no late-night race against deadlines. Their documentation? Done. Completed during patient visits, thanks to an integrated AI workflow that not only captured essential details of their patient but also highlighted critical care needs in near real-time.

This isn’t just a glimpse of what’s possible—it’s the reality Meaningful Augmented Intelligence (AI) creates for home care & hospice providers. With AI-assisted documentation tools, caregivers are freed from after-hours work. Repetitive tasks are automated, and accurate, compliant records are captured during visits. As a result, clinicians can focus on what matters most: delivering care to their patients during the day and being present for their families at night.

Meaningful Integrated AI in Care at Home: How it Works and Why It Matters

Integrated AI doesn’t just automate tasks—it enhances every part of the care process. By embedding AI directly into existing workflows, solutions empower clinicians and administrators to work smarter, not harder. Predictive analytics, real-time documentation and automated data entry reduce repetitive tasks and administrative burden, clearing staff to focus on patient care.

Unlike generic AI tools, Meaningful AI supports clinicians at the point of care. It captures essential details during visits, highlights critical needs as they arise, and offers real-time guidance. This isn’t just about making work faster—it’s about making it more human. Integrated AI simplifies workflows and strengthens decision-making, whether it’s anticipating a patient’s end-of-life needs, identifying compliance risks, or supporting proactive billing.

The AI Trifecta

AI isn’t just about automation—it’s about Meaningful AI that directly addresses the needs of community-based providers. With our AI Trifecta, every aspect of care delivery is reimagined to optimize processes, empower staff, and simplify reimbursement.

Optimize Processes

Integrated AI helps organizations operate more efficiently by taking over time-intensive, repetitive tasks, allowing staff to focus on patient care. For example, guided assist tools integrated with clinical workflows proactively coach staff through complex tasks like completing the OASIS assessment or interdisciplinary start of care documentation.

Imagine a clinician documenting care after a patient visit. With AI-powered assistance, charting can pre-fill fields based on visit details, flag potential inconsistencies in near real-time and suggest changes to align with regulatory requirements for a supervisor to review. This reduces errors and speeds up documentation, freeing clinicians to focus on patients rather than administrative tasks.

Predictive analytics empower organizations to anticipate and address challenges early, supporting clinical benefits of Hospice Visits in the Last Days of Life (HVLDL) such as symptom management, reduced patient distress and honoring the patient’s end-of-life wishes.

Empower Staff

The backbone of any agency is its staff. Integrated AI tools relieve the pressures of excessive documentation and administrative burdens. These tools aren’t just about doing tasks faster—they help create a more sustainable work-life balance by addressing challenges like burnout and turnover.

Staff can also benefit from smart task prioritization. Meaningful AI tools can include the ability to log in and instantly see a clear list of priorities based on patient needs and compliance deadlines. This reduces time spent figuring out “what’s next” so that every action directly contributes to better patient outcomes.

Simplify Reimbursement

Some AI tools monitor claims for potential issues before submission. Imagine if your system could identify a missing modifier or mismatch in coding then flag the problem and provide actionable suggestions to correct it. This not only increases first-pass acceptance rates but also reduces the exhausting back-and-forth that often accompanies denied claims.

Beyond preventing errors, predictive tools assess patterns in denial risks and reimbursement trends, enabling organizations to adjust strategies proactively. Leaders can use these insights to negotiate better contracts or refine documentation practices, ensuring steady cash flow and financial health and upstream process improvement. This empowers organizations to invest resources where they matter most: improving patient outcomes.

About Netsmart myUnity® NX

With Meaningful AI at the heart of myUnity NX, every part of the healthcare process—from care delivery to financial health—works smarter, not harder. These innovations support not just operational efficiency but also the well-being of care teams. By embedding intelligent workflows, providers have the time and space to focus on what matters most—delivering exceptional, person-centered care. Learn more about Netsmart myUnity® NX

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Scott Green leads the Care Dimensions business unit at Netsmart. In his role, he leads a team focused on building out a comprehensive suite of solutions designed to support organizations as they digitize their operations beyond the EHR. Green has been with Netsmart for 10 years and has held many roles during that time including leading the Human Services business unit.

Prior to joining Netsmart, he spent 13 years with Pfizer where he focused on building relationships and clinical initiatives with Integrated Delivery Networks.

Scott holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial psychology from Kansas State University and a graduate certificate in healthcare leadership from Park University.

©2025 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared on the Netsmart blog and is reprinted here with permission. For more information or to request permission to print, please contact Netsmart.

AI and Communication in Healthcare

by Kristin Rowan | Jan 16, 2025 | Admin, Artificial Intelligence, Caring for the Caregiver

An exerpt of “How AI is Enhancing Healthcare Communication” by Sandeep Shah, Founder and CEO, Skyscape

Edited by Kristin Rowan

How AI is Enhancing Communication

Artificial intelligence isn’t a new concept. In the healthcare industry alone, AI has been used to some degree since the 1970’s. It was first implemented to help identify blood infection treatments and showed promising results. This led to further curiosity about what it could do for healthcare professionals.

Today, AI is commonly used in several aspects of care, especially regarding radiology, screening tests, psychiatry, disease diagnosis, and predictive and preventative care. However, one lesser-known way AI tools are impacting our industry is through enhanced communication. AI is reshaping how care at home professionals interact with patients and care teams.

Challenges in Medical Communication

Electronic Health records have reduced the incidence of medical errors by improving the accuracy and clarity of medical records. However, they do not address the communication challenges today’s healthcare organizations still face. Communication channels, especially in care at home, are often fragmented, leaving gaps in patient care, follow-up, and department collaboration. Moreover, patient engagement is increasingly tricky without good communication, resulting in disruptive care plans or gaps in their treatment.

Effective communication is paramount to enhancing patient outcomes, revenue growth, and operational efficiency. Thanks to advancements in technology, AI has the potential to bridge these gaps and create a better experience for both healthcare providers and the patients they care for.

AI Communication Improving Patient Care

Communication within a HH agency is becoming increasingly complex. With more patients and a shortage of nurses, your team may be overwhelmed with tasks, applications, and health information. Luckily, there are several ways that you and your team can leverage artificial intelligence to better communication with patients and care teams (physicians, nurses, surgeons, lab technicians, administrative staff, etc.)

Here are some AI applications that will have the most impact on your agency:

Scheduling and Follow-ups

AI can improve both scheduling and follow-up processes, where there are often delays and miscommunications. AI software can automate appointment reminders and confirmations as well as rescheduling appointments if needed. These automated systems increase patient engagment with your agency and in their treatment. Some AI platforms can analyze patient data to give you a better look at patients who may have additional needs, which could also increase your billings.

Real-Time Support

Care at home nurses and caregivers report burnout due to increased requirements and tasks, including patient communication. AI should not replace your caregivers, but it can be helpful for simple questions, appointment reminders, and other routine tasks.

Future uses may include assistance with medical questions and creating a plan of care. AI is becoming more powerful in learning predetermined information, including scientifically reviewed medical information. Having real-time access to evidence-based, clinical information can accelerate care decisions at the point-of-care.

Less Paperwork, Less Burnout

Care at home nurses and caregivers can spend hours per day on documentation and patient communication. AI cannot and should not completely replace human interaction and communication, but it can significantly reduce the administrative burden of your employees.

Documentation, care notes, intake, and patient emails consume a significant portion of the day. A study from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that AI-generated emails and replies significantly reduce the mental strain on medical professionals. The study focused on communication between doctors and patients, but suggests that is can ease the workload of nurses and other healthcare professionals.

Efficient Workflows

Streamlining workflows seems to be one of the most promising applications of AI. Generative AI can interpret the information it is given to create something new. For care at home, this means the eventual use of AI for OASIS coding, plan-of-care, NTUC documentation, and more.

Removing Language and Cultural Barriers

Language translation creates the possibility for any of your caregivers to care for any patient, regardless of the language they speak. AI translators bridge gaps in communication, especially when it comes to care plans and symptoms that are not generally part of the vocabulary taught when learning a language.

AI can also adjust communication for certain cultural backgrounds, improving patient trust and satisfaction, which can impact your star rating.

Care Collaboration

Using digital secure platforms, you can create communication channels with patients, family members, family caregivers, doctors, specialists, lab technicians, and anyone else involved in patient care. Instant updates to all the members of a patient’s care team relays critical information when it’s needed most.

Save Time and Money

Not only do these AI applications improve patient satisfaction and reduce the workload for your nurses, AI can save you money. By automating operations like scheduling, shift fulfillment, billing, and other routine, repetitive tasks, your agency can scale without adding additional administrative personnel. With minimal profit margins, automation can help ensure your agency can continuing putting effort where it matters most, into patient care.

The Platform Matters

AI sounds great, and the applications for improving efficiency, better patient satisfaction, better employee satisfaction, and lower costs are appealing to care at home agency owners. However, spending your time, effort, and money on the wrong AI platform can be worse than doing nothing at all.

AI platforms should enhance, not replace, any task it is designed to perform. If an AI platform promises to handle 100% of any task, run, don’t walk, in any direction.

With so many AI applications available, you could onboard dozens of platforms and still have room for more automation. Look for AI applications that perform multiple tasks and/or integrate with other AI software companies.

When you’re ready to let AI simplify your agency and make your staff and patients happier, it may be a good idea to find a consultant who is an expert in software and AI applications to recommend the right fit for your agency.

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About Buzz

Buzz is a HIPAA-secure platform that simplifies real-time on-the-go communications between all stakeholders in an organization’s healthcare ecosystem (administrators, operations, billing, payors, providers and patients). It supports commonly used communication modalities, including texts, dictation, private calls, audio, images, reports, and video sharing. By consolidating these features into a single platform, Buzz eliminates the need for multiple communication tools, reducing confusion and burnout and enabling healthcare teams to focus on delivering exceptional patient care.

Sandeep Shah is a pioneering technology entrepreneur, educator, and innovator, combining vision with strong technical expertise to transform healthcare delivery. Track record delivering innovative technologies to Harvard’s hospital network, and developing the first, truly usable mHealth application. Technical interests in telehealth, Clinical Communication and Collaboration (CC&C), and business leadership. Educational background in electrical engineering (B.Tech) and computer science (M.Tech), both from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

©2025 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

Product Review: AI Comes to Data Analytics

by Kristin Rowan | Aug 16, 2024 | Product Review

by Kristin Rowan, Editor

Artificial Intelligence has existed in basic forms for many years and has recently advanced to include augmented intelligence and generative intelligence. The Rowan Report has provided several examples of quality AI usage and even more examples of AI applications that are fraudulent, improperly applied, and/or poorly executed. As we continue our journey of AI discovery, we are seeing more companies researching how to effectively use AI to enhance existing software solutions as well as new solutions entirely based on AI. We’ve reviewed AI software for point of referral, talk to text documentation, employee recruitment and retention, and now data analytics.

The Rowan Report recently met the founder of a data analytics AI software solution, Skyra.ai. “Our goal is to advance the industry to be technology forward,” said Skyra founder Mickel Mirchandani, “we imagined a future were technology empowers home care agencies to focus on what matters – serving patients.”

Data Analytics: From What to Why

Care at Home agencies have no shortage of access to reports through various tech solutions. Hours worked and earnings from payroll reporting, average length of visit and number of patients per week from EMR and EVV reports, average daily census, employee turnover rate, and the list goes on. These reports are useful in telling us what is happening within our agency, with our staff, and with our partners. Once you have this information, what do you do with it? Does it tell you why your top clinician saw five fewer clients last week? Does it explain the decrease in referrals from area hospitals and physicians? Can the reports tell you whether the recent trends will continue? Why are these things happening in your agency? And what’s more, how do I fix them?

Give Your Home Health Agency a Much-Needed Tune-Up

Like the warning light on your dashboard, data is meaningless until it is diagnosed. That warning light that tells you your referral numbers dropped last week might indicate new competition in your area, a drop in confidence in your agency by hospitals and physicians, too many NTUCs on your scorecard, or simply a glitch in paperwork or your website. The data tells you the numbers have dropped. Skyra.ai tells you why.

Skyra is a data analytics solution that connects to your EMR, payroll, accounts payable, scheduling, and quite literally almost any other piece of your tech stack that has useful data you want to see.

With a standard dashboard containing the most relevant and popular queries, and the ability to create custom insights, Skyra makes understanding the volumes of data collected simple and easy. Once you understand the “why” behind the numbers, you can make adjustments in your operating, scheduling, ordering, and operations to improve the overall health of your agency.

Features

Standard Dashboard
Insights for each Team (Sales, Executive, Clinical)
Two-Month Data Trends
Custom Insights Page
Pinned Query that refreshes itself daily
Understands multiple languages
Zero Percent Hallucination
HIPAA Compliant with multiple security layers applied vertically and horizontally

“Ask Sky” – the Generative AI assistant you can tap into for custom insights into your agency
Compliance Monitor to avoid payment penalties by ensuring accuracy and timeliness of submissions
Control Tower for key metrics and alerts

Platform Agnostic

Data analytics is difficult enough without using multiple tech solutions. Even worse is when you’ve decided that a particular solution no longer works for your agency and you find yourself shopping for a new payroll, scheduling, or EMR solution. How do you preserve the years of data from your legacy systems without interruption?

Skyra.ai’s unique process stores all your data as though it comes from the same source, in the same language. Switching from solution to solution is a seamless process that keeps your data intact and reduces the opportunity cost of changing systems.

Future Plans

The team at Skyra is not content with one of the most advanced AI applications in the space. With a recently redesigned website, and new partners, Skyra is now looking to the future. Look for a two-way communication solution over a secured system with encrypted messages. The messaging system will connect caregivers to patients, patients to care teams, and caregivers, to care teams. The solution will reduce triage costs, reduce rehospitalizations rates, assist with marketing efforts, and increase CHAP scores. Skra Connect will launch sometime in 2025.

But, first, Skyra is focusing its development efforts on an application for sales teams and marketers. An alternative to a traditional CRM that requires large amounts of useless data input and doesn’t help close a deal, Skyra’s sales solution will provide a CRM solution that sales people actually want to use and will free up their time to spend on customer-facing activities.

The Rowan Report will provide a separate review of each of these new products as they become available.

Overall Impression

A Familiar Problem

Skyra.ai found Mickel tells a familiar story about the idea for his solution. Familiar, at least, to those of us who grew up in the 80s. When our favorite band released new songs, we ran to the nearest music retail store to buy a cassette tape. If your favorite song on the tape was track 3, you know the pains of fast forwarding and rewinding to get the tape to the perfect spot at the beginning of the song, only to have to do it all over again when the song ends. Today, we ask “Alexa” or “Siri” or “Google” to play our favorite song and it starts at exactly the right second every time. Mickel strove to make accessing and understand data as easy as asking Alexa to play your favorite song. Ask Sky removes the fast forward and rewind buttons and lets you understand your data faster.

A Consolidated Solution

As a small business, and even as an individual, I know how many applications I have to log in to daily to see my business analytics and personal information. Skyra houses all of your business information in one place for easy access and provides an open-ended query so each agency gets the information they need most to help the agency operate at its fullest potential. The possibilities that will exist as the AI technology advances is near endless.

As we have mentioned before, there are a lot of misuses for artificial intelligence, and a lot of misunderstanding. Now, it seems, we have found at least one more company doing AI well.

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Kristin Rowan has been working at Healthcare at Home: The Rowan Report since 2008. She has a master’s degree in business administration and marketing and runs Girard Marketing Group, a multi-faceted boutique marketing firm specializing in event planning, sales, and marketing strategy. She has recently taken on the role of Editor of The Rowan Report and will add her voice to current Home Care topics as well as marketing tips for home care agencies. Connect with Kristin directly kristin@girardmarketinggroup.com or www.girardmarketinggroup.com

©2024 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Healthcare at Home: The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

Generative AI Comes to AlayaCare

by Kristin Rowan | Jun 27, 2024 | Artificial Intelligence, Caring for the Caregiver, Product Review, Vendor Watch

by Kristin Rowan, Editor

Generative AI and Artificial Intelligence are taking the world, and the care at home industry, by storm. Not surprisingly, there are only a few companies that are doing AI well. We’ve started reviewing the best of of them. So far, each company doing AI well has a unique solution to a pain point in home care. No two companies are approaching or using AI the same way. This week, we’d like to re-introduce you to a company we’ve reviewed before that has a new Generative AI app launching soon.

History

Practically a household name in home care, AlayaCare is a 10-year-old software company that started as a mobile workforce platform. Like many of us, once Adrian Schauer, Co-Founder and CEO, spend some time in the care at home world, he was hooked. He shifted the focus of AlayaCare to the care at home space. With parents in their 80s, Adrian found a lack of inspiring software in the industry in Canada and he felt like that was an important problem to solve.

“Care workers are doing God’s work, and they are not getting the support they deserve,” says Schauer. In Canada, where AlayaCare started, agencies combine home health and supportive care. Because of this, the largest patient base on the AlayaCare platform is on the supportive care at home side, but they now operate within home health as well. Since 2021, AlayaCare has added hospice to their network with the acquisition of Delta Health.

AI Comes to AlayaCare

Through many iterations of the software, AlayaCare has advanced with new technological capabilities. Now, AlayaCare is embracing artificial intelligence; more specifically, Generative AI. Schauer explains that the purpose of their new AI technology is “to enable the type of care we want our loved ones to receive at home.”

The new GenAI app was demoed in September of 2023 and is still in Beta testing. AlayaCare is anticipating an end-of-summer launch of the product.

Introducing...Layla

Layla is an in-app digital assistant, built on top of GenAI. It’s large language model allows the user to conversationally interact with the data in the system. It also includes a constrained internet search component. From the conversation, it can determine whether the user is seeking internal or external information.

Layla’s data exploration does more than just extracting data. The GenAi platform allows Layla to provide operational support around key metrics for employee retention.

Agency Support

AlayaCare has determined some key factors in employee retention:

Utilization
Quality shifts
Qualified Hours
Recurrent shifts
Average weekly clients
Weekday hours vs weekend hours

Focusing on these factors, Layla provides improvements in onboarding, scripting information, data migration, and scheduler use of time.

Features

Visit Optimizer

AI generated, automated scheduler that takes into account route management, skill matching, daily hours, and schedule optimization to optimize care and reduce time from referral to first appointment.

The scheduling automation includes push notification capabilities to send schedule updates to clinicians in real time. As each week’s schedule is created, Layla can send a push notification to each clinician. It asks them to verify their availability and confirm the next week’s schedule.

Additionally, Layla considers environmental factors such as pets, neighborhoods, and other family members in the home. According to AlayaCare users, the Visit Optimizer offers up to a 98% decrease in time required to fill visits, 35% improvement in visit fulfillment, and 35% improvement in data quality.

Notable

Notable transforms notes from patient visits, forms, and client records. Then, it uses AI to review, compile, categorize, and tag all the notes.

From this information, Notable compiles an activity of daily living (ADL) for each client, including whether and why a task was completed. This information is also moved to the risk dashboard. The risk dashboard shows the whole population, the risk of that population, identifiable trends, risk level, and whether the risk has remained stable over time. All of this information is compiled into a single risk dashboard with customizable reports.

Additional security measures for Notable include a grounded model to reduce the risk of AI hallucination and ensuring no PHI leaves the dashboard.

Employee Retention Dashboard

Several factors impact employee retention. Among the top reasons for employee dissatisfaction are pay and benefits, inconsistent hours, and safety concerns. The current workforce shortage means keeping your best employees is more important than ever. With a quick snapshot of your employee satisfaction and engagement, you can address concerns earlier and improve turnover rates.

The employee retention dashboard highlights satisfaction scores, client capacity, scheduled hours, number of unique clients, overall turnover rates, turnovers by location, and more.

“Having a tool to predict employees who may be disengaged or dissatisfied prior to this happening is invaluable,” said Lee Grunberg, President & CEO, Integracare. “With the dashboard and algorithm behind it, we can see a caregivers’ satisfaction or engagement trend over time, and deploy preventative measures to reduce the likelihood that they’ll resign. It has empowered our coordinators to be much more retention-driven.”

On Deck for Layla

I spoke with Adrian Schauer, Co-founder and CEO of AlayaCare, during the online demo. “My passion project is…Layla. The people in your agency should be building relationships and making decisions. Anything else should be done by automation.”

AlayaCare is currently in a high growth mode to build marketshare across the personal care and skilled sides of the marketing. Schauer’s goal is to elevate a level above their existing capabilities with home based care providers. This includes how payers are set up, how EVV is operating, lobbying, and advocacy.

For Layla, AlayaCare is working on the GenAI capacity for chart completion by voice. Layla would use the conversational language model it already has to recognize and understand the conversation during a home visit and transcribe the conversation into notes, visit documentation, care plans, and codes.

Final Thoughts

As AI becomes more commonplace across care at home, we are scrutinizing AI platforms for safety, identity protection, accuracy, and ethical use. If you are looking for an AI solution for your business operations, we caution you to use discretion in your use of AI and thorougly vet the AI platform prior to adoption. We will continue to provide updates when Layla launches later this year. But, for now, it looks like we’ve found one more technology platform that is using AI the right way.