In the United States alone, there are roughly 2.6 million households with at least one child with an intellectual and/or developmental disability. An organization dedicated to assisting these individuals faces a significant challenge with 3,300 cases waiting to be picked up at any given time. The organization does not have the bandwidth to keep up with this increasing demand, as the process of creating a Life Plan, a crucial document for service approval imposed by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), can take up to 8 hours, leaving care managers with little time to serve more individuals. Recognizing this pressing issue, Valorem Reply collaborated with this care coordination organization to revolutionize the way Life Plans are created. Leveraging the power of Azure AI Services, we developed a solution that drastically reduces the time required to prepare these documents. Care managers can now simply upload documents related to an individual, and the application will generate the different sections of the Life Plan. By automating this process, we can cut down the preparation time from 6-8 hours to under 2 hours. This not only allows care managers to serve more individuals but also ensures that the Life Plans are accurate and effective, ultimately enhancing the quality of life for those they serve.
The AI solution has had an immediate impact on both team morale and productivity, significantly enhancing the quality and consistency of work across the department for the benefit of those we assist. While the tool is not intended to—and does not—replace the expertise of our staff, it allows them to focus less on routine mechanics and more on refining the content of the care plans they develop. The solution provides a head start, easily shaving hours off the process, which enables us to help more people. This is the most significant impact: creating a more streamlined approach to accessing services for those in need.” - Information Security Officer, Care Coordination Organization
Our collaboration with this care organization exemplifies our commitment to using advanced AI technologies to drive meaningful improvements in healthcare and social services.” - Nicholas Burton, Manager, Tech for Social Impact, Valorem Reply
Initial feedback from care managers has been extremely positive, stating that our solution produces the same or better results than what they would create themselves and so much faster.” - Pete Meeks, Senior Consultant, Valorem Reply
CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES
- The time required to provide justification of services for individuals with disabilities to the OPWDD can take up to 8 hours, causing significant bottlenecks.
- Extensive documentation process of the Life Plan limits the number of individuals that can receive essential services.
- Care managers face work burnout due to the increasing workload.
SOLUTIONS
- Develop a custom user application (Python) that allows care managers to upload documents for a specific individual.
- Azure Document Intelligence scans the document for OCR recognition and provides the layout of the document. The document is then analyzed and stored within a Vector database (powered by Semantic Kernel) where it is indexed.
- Azure OpenAI to complete each section of the life plan template using the provided documents.
- Using these Azure AI services, the life plan is quickly generated, providing recommendations and justifications for care.
RESULTS
- Significant reduction in the time required to create a life plan, allowing care managers to process individuals quicker; from 6-8 hours down to 1-2 or less allowing for multiple plans to be created on a daily basis.
- Better health outcomes for more individuals due to faster processing.
- Improved efficiency and reduced workload for care managers.
- Elevated satisfaction and streamlined operations.
- Enhanced ability to support families and individuals with diverse abilities.
- Safer placements for individuals in inappropriate settings, reducing exposure to risk.