CareMessage Introduces AI Assistant to Close Health Equity Gaps in Underserved Communities

AI Assistant projected to save healthcare providers $5M annually by reducing patient no-show rates

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — CareMessage, the largest patient activation platform in the United States for underserved populations, today announced the launch of their AI Assistant, adding ethical AI tools to their market-leading innovative Health Equity Engine^™. The AI Assistant is specifically designed to interpret and parse patient responses into structured data, helping more efficiently find responses that surface patient needs such as food insecurity or transportation barriers. In addition to removing critical barriers to patient communication, CareMessage’s AI tools are expected to save their customers up to $5M annually in recaptured appointments – savings they can use to focus on patient care and health outcomes.

Common barriers to attending appointments include transportation, work conflicts, and financial constraints, which disproportionately affect low socioeconomic and minority populations. Studies show that no-show rates can be as high as 33-40% in these groups, contributing to fragmented care and worsening health outcomes.

CareMessage’s AI Assistant is tailor-made for safety-net organizations and aligned to their mission to address health equity in healthcare. As part of their commitment to the safe and ethical development of AI-backed tools, CareMessage conducted rigorous testing on multiple large language models (LLMs), ultimately selecting Google Gemini due to its accuracy and ease of use. To further validate the solution, they co-developed and tested their AI Assistant with select key customers, focusing on the specific needs of those organizations, addressing biases, implementing robust validation, and ensuring safety while centering patient impact. As part of their ethical stance to AI implementation, during the broader release clinics can opt-out at any time.

“We saw patients trying to have conversations with their providers critical to addressing health inequities, and facing barriers with stricter response logic that could not interpret their intent. Through this approach, CareMessage is driving a paradigm shift in patient engagement and healthcare delivery, particularly for underserved populations,” said Cecilia Corral, CareMessage Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer. “We’re bringing technology to safety net organizations that is designed to work alongside their team, and with safeguards in place to protect patient safety. The healthcare organization remains in control of the parsing logic that drives critical decisions, while improving the interactive conversations with patients at scale.”

CareMessage’s AI tools expand their already extensive patient engagement success, which has seen impressive results for over 20M patients and 400+ safety-net organizations, including:

No-Show Reduction: Clinics using CareMessage have seen dramatic improvements in appointment adherence, with no-show reductions ranging from 45-50%
Care Gap Closure: At a Wisconsin health center, 27% of patients completed cervical cancer screenings within 90 days after receiving CareMessage reminders
Patient Activation: A health center saw a 20% response rate from previously inactive patients, resulting in 515 scheduled appointments

Building on these results, clinics in the pilot program are already seeing exceptional results after implementing CareMessage’s AI Assistant. One clinic, Maple City in Goshen, Indiana, serving low-income patients saw that an average of 81% of responses classified by the AI were patients not attending their appointment. Identifying these potential no-shows allows the clinic to reschedule appointments and provide care to patients who would have fallen through the cracks.

“As part of our strategic focus on providing quality, comprehensive health care that is accessible to all, identifying patients who will miss their appointment is critical. Automatically classifying patients who won’t attend their appointment via CareMessage’s AI Assistant allows our staff to quickly fill open appointment spots while also identifying and rescheduling patients to ensure they don’t slip through the cracks. We’re now able to do this without increasing the time needed to manually review patient responses,” said Paul Shetler Fast, Maple City Executive Director. “Pairing CareMessage and Maple City’s efforts across multiple features, we’ve been able to reduce our no-show rates by 27.7% since the beginning of the year, getting them down to 9.9% in October.”

As a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, CareMessage’s AI research and development was supported by philanthropic donations from aligned organizations, including the Ballmer Group and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. The AI Assistant is just the first step in CareMessage’s plans for reinventing the safety-net healthcare space to improve health equity.

Starting today, CareMessage’s AI tools are available for all their current and future customers.

About the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation

The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF) is a philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence and data science solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all. PJMF works in partnership with public, private, and social institutions to drive progress on our most pressing challenges, including digital health, climate change, broad digital access, and data maturity in the social sector.

About Ballmer Group

Ballmer Group is committed to improving economic mobility for children and families in the United States. Ballmer Group funds leaders and organizations that have demonstrated the ability to reshape opportunity and reduce systemic inequities.

About CareMessage

CareMessage is the technology non-profit building the largest patient engagement platform for low-income populations in the United States. Powered by the Health Equity Engine^™, the platform enables organizations to combine messaging, data, and interoperability to increase access to care, improve clinical outcomes, and address social drivers of health.

With 20 million patients reached since 2013, CareMessage is the only patient engagement solution proven to improve health equity at scale. The team, many with lived experiences in these communities, leverages a nonprofit model to reinvest revenue into impact. CareMessage is the partner of choice for organizations committed to advancing health equity.

SOURCE CareMessage