AI Strategy for Community Health Centers:

Harnessing the Future

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving paradigm-shifting change within community health organizations of all sizes.  While navigating the hype around AI can be confusing, strategic implementation of AI can have very real and tangible impacts to a community health center.  These changes can save both time and money in multiple areas—medical, finance, administration, customer service, and information technology—bringing lasting productivity gains throughout the entire organization.

It is imperative that community health centers create a strategic vision for how AI will be used, how training will be provided, and what tools should be sought after.  As artificial intelligence technology continues to mature there are opportunities for significant growth—if you are strategic, prepared, and asking the right questions. 

Vision & Strategy

The IT vision of a community medical group should be to implement AI technology wherever possible, and to include policies on how AI is expected to be used, as well as where it will be inappropriate to use.

Sample Vision Statement

“Our community health center intends to use AI technology wherever feasible to provide better patient experiences, reduce administrative burdens, automation of work flows, and a safe environment for our people to use AI without security risks.”

Sample Strategy

“Our community health center will implement our AI vision as comprehensively as we can .  We will revisit this strategy annually, or as new opportunities present themselves, to validate new tools and whether they fit our vision for the organization.”

AI Preparedness by Department

  • Imagine a call center agent that is always available to answer patient inquiries, from appointment scheduling to payment—that’s the impact of AI on your customer service team.

    AI Call Center Agents

    • Available 24/7

    • Answers common questions to free staff to address more complex queries

    • Available through multiple channels, including text and voice

    • Makes collecting payment easy

  • AI innovations can revolutionize how providers care for patients by streamlining common tasks.

    AI Scribes

    • Provider dictation that populates directly to the patient’s chart

    • Can provide diagnostic recommendations

    • Expedite the charting process with provider approval

    • Frees up providers to focus on the patient experience instead of notetaking

    AI Healthcare Models

    • Tools that assist providers in researching a diagnosis and creating a treatment plan

    • Takes patient information and makes recommendations

    • Can be integrated into certain EHR platforms

  • AI is already integrated into many office and productivity tools and there is great opportunity for many mundane tasks to be automated.

    Inbound Faxing with AI

    • Automatic accepts, reads, and files inbound faxes

    • Sends appropriate faxes to patient charts

    • Supported by some EHRs

    AI Integration in Existing Tools

    • AI is already integrated into common office and productivity tools (e.g. Microsoft Copilot)

    • These tools can streamline many common administrative tasks

    • Using integrated AI tools in healthcare settings requires careful execution in order to maintain proper privacy standards

  • AI can make complex billings tasks a breeze.

    AI Automated Billing Codes

    • Reduces the number of staff required to manage billing codes

    • Included in many EHRs

  • IT is a complex world—AI takes many streams of data and makes it easy to monitor your business and make actionable decisions.

    Security Operations

    • Augments the security team to analyze data from security tools in real time to identify threats

    • Can provide action recommendations to assist in triage

    • Runs 24/7 to assist in after hours mitigation

    Network Operations

    • Monitors for network issues and fixes in real time

    • Synthesizes logs for easy analysis

    • Frees up network engineers for more strategic work

    AI Chatbots

    • Allows end users to talk to an IT chatbot about basic issues like password resets

    • Automates common, easy IT tasks so staff has more time to work on complex projects

Watch AI make waves in patient care

Considering AI for your Community Health Organization?

The questions you must consider are these: 

  • Is your organization ready for AI?  How do you know? 

  • What is required for your organization to be prepared to use AI? 

  • Do you know what tools to implement and when? 

  • What changes are necessary within your IT department to make AI a priority? 

Whatever your technological posture or confidence with AI, Telcion is ready to help you drive innovational change for your healthcare organization.

Want to strategize for the future?

Contact Telcion’s CEO, Lance Reid, to set up a personal discussion on harnessing the power of AI for your organization.