Globally, many countries, including Canada, are experiencing a critical shortage of health professionals driven by an aging population and increased demand for health care services, among other factors. This shortage disproportionately impacts rural areas, which have difficulty recruiting and retaining new physicians and clinicians.
Our client, a health services organization serving rural and remote communities in a Canadian province, was experiencing similar challenges and engaged Deetken Insight to forecast the demand for health care professionals and evaluate options for improving health care labour productivity in the long-term.
To do this, Deetken developed an economic model for forecasting labour force demand based on historical clinical volume and projected population changes. We also conducted and summarized comprehensive research on health care labour productivity, evaluated various policy levers and identified and assessed available labour productivity initiatives within the health care sector. As part of this analysis, we developed a framework for evaluating investments in labour productivity initiatives and their impact on increasing overall clinical capacity.
Based on our findings and analysis, we identified five classes of labour productivity enhancements which the organization could categorize and fund with a specific goal of increasing health care labour productivity. Among these were the use of specialized artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can automate mundane tasks and free up clinician’s time to spend caring for patients. We also developed a forecasting tool to help the organization’s leadership understand their future labour force needs.
In follow up to this project, Deetken has been re-engaged by the organization to identify, prioritize and pilot potential use cases for generative AI for enhancing labour productivity. To date, Deetken has piloted the use of generative AI for conducting and supporting chart reviews, improving call center operations for lab appointment bookings and improving access to internal information and documents, such policies and reports. This project is ongoing.
To learn more about our services for health care organizations, visit the Services section of our website. To learn more about our AI consulting services, visit https://deetken.com/ai-consulting/.
