HME COLUMN
Finally Fixing the Workflow Problem
Homecare’s bottleneck isn’t the fax machine—it’s what we do with it
By Sudha Sureddi
Not long ago, I sat with a provider who showed me their process for handling a new patient referral. It involved five different systems, a fax machine and a lot of guesswork. The team was experienced, dedicated and working incredibly hard, but even they admitted that it shouldn’t be that complex.
I’ve worked across multiple corners of healthcare, and nowhere else have I seen this level of friction between intent and execution. Home-based care has come so far in delivering compassionate, patient-centered support. But behind the scenes, we’re still asking staff to decode handwritten forms, chase down missing data and manually push paper across digital and physical desks. That must change.
The Hidden Bottleneck That Hurts Everyone
Let’s be clear: This isn’t about nostalgia for fax machines. It’s about what their continued use represents—manual, disconnected and error-prone workflows that cause intake delays, slow down authorizations and strain staff.
The burden isn’t just operational, it’s human. When documentation gets stuck, care gets delayed. When reimbursement drags, growth stalls. And when overworked teams can’t get ahead, burnout rises.
I hear this across the board: “We want to grow, but we can’t hire fast enough to keep up.” That’s not a hiring problem—it’s a workflow problem.
AI Isn’t Magic
There’s a lot of hype around AI, some of it warranted, some of it not. But in homecare, the biggest opportunity is very grounded: document intelligence. That means using AI not just to scan paperwork, but to truly understand it.
When we apply AI thoughtfully, it can help teams:
- Instantly classify incoming documents without manual sorting
- Extract key data from prescriptions, referrals and authorizations
- Validate what’s missing before it delays billing
- Prioritize work based on urgency, value or risk
- Provide visibility across the entire document lifecycle
One provider reported reducing manual document handling by more than 80%. Another shaved weeks off their time-to-bill figure.
But what struck me most wasn’t the metrics—it was what their team said: “We finally have time to focus on the patient again.” The real promise of AI is not to replace people, but to remove the friction that keeps them from doing their best work.
Human-Centered AI Is the Only Kind That Works
Success with AI doesn’t start with technology, it starts with people. It starts with empathy for everyone, from the intake coordinator buried in faxes to the operations director trying to scale without burning out their team.
If we build AI without understanding those realities, we’ll only shift the burden, not solve it. That means:
- Designing tools that are transparent and explainable, not black boxes
- Integrating into existing systems, not adding new logins
- Working side-by-side with users to build trust and ease, not just efficiency
When these principles are prioritized, automation becomes an enabler, not another hurdle.
A Smarter Path Forward
Too often, we treat the manual cost of sorting through unstructured data like a fixed cost of doing business. But it doesn’t have to be. With the right technology and thoughtful design, we can streamline complexity without eliminating the tools teams still rely on.
That doesn’t mean getting rid of faxes altogether. It means modernizing how we manage the information they carry. It means blending traditional workflows with intelligent automation—creating a more connected, responsive system that meets teams where they are.
I believe the future of homecare is digital, intelligent and deeply human. AI is part of that future—but only if we implement it with a relentless focus on outcomes that matter.
We have an opportunity to modernize without disruption. To build bridges between legacy tools and intelligent platforms. And to ensure every document, regardless of how it enters the system, becomes a catalyst for care.
Let’s build it.
Sudha Sureddi is vice president of product management for Brightree. She brings experience from previous roles at Brightree, Kaiser Permanente and NextGen Healthcare. Visit brightree.com.
Jacob Lund, Elnur - adobestock.com
