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Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

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Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

BeetleB wrote: post #8
munk-a wrote: post #5

> "Nurses fear that having long calls can lead to bad performance reviews" > A company spokesperson said, "Kaiser Permanente does not use Average Handle Time to assess agent performance" So uh, average time wasn't raised as a concern, calls beyond a certain threshold was. I wish this semantic discrepancy was better highlighted in the article.

I have some inside information (but not much!) They claim they do not use average handle time, but it is very common to get called into meetings to discuss why they spent a lot of time on some calls. The nurses get defensive (by definition - they have to justify the time used - it is a defense). They also do get called into meetings if their average handle time is large. It may still be true they don't use it for eva…

Are these nurses currently represented by a union?

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#12

Post by BeetleB »

neaden wrote: post #3

If you think using a machine to evaluate how well a human is showing empathy is a good idea, you probably shouldn't have any position of power.

If you employ a few hundred nurses, how exactly would you evaluate how well they show empathy?

You can't rely on asking the customer. When they're upset (they often are in these calls), they'll lean towards the negative regardless.

I don't know how well these AIs evaluate, but if they're even a little bit good, it makes sense to use it to screen for outliers, then have a human listen to those outliers and judge.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#14

Post by BeetleB »

14 wrote: post #6

I would love to learn the cost of the AI versus how many new workers they could afford to hire and get more calls done. But I assume the end goal will be full replacement of human workers once the AI has had enough time to learn the job.

The AI is a lot cheaper. Kaiser nurses are amongst the highest paid in the nation.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#15

Post by malfist »

BeetleB wrote: post #12
neaden wrote: post #3

If you think using a machine to evaluate how well a human is showing empathy is a good idea, you probably shouldn't have any position of power.

If you employ a few hundred nurses, how exactly would you evaluate how well they show empathy? You can't rely on asking the customer. When they're upset (they often are in these calls), they'll lean towards the negative regardless. I don't know how well these AIs evaluate, but if they're even a little bit good, it makes sense to use it to screen for outliers, then have a human listen to those outliers and judge.

Actually, you can rely on the customers. They're the only ones that can tell you.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#16

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

BeetleB wrote: post #12
neaden wrote: post #3

If you think using a machine to evaluate how well a human is showing empathy is a good idea, you probably shouldn't have any position of power.

If you employ a few hundred nurses, how exactly would you evaluate how well they show empathy? You can't rely on asking the customer. When they're upset (they often are in these calls), they'll lean towards the negative regardless. I don't know how well these AIs evaluate, but if they're even a little bit good, it makes sense to use it to screen for outliers, then have a human listen to those outliers and judge.

Not asking the customer because you're afraid they'll tell you they're upset is a good indicator that you should do it more, and fix the issues.

You can ask the customer enough times that unreasonable customers or surveys are averaged out.

A good question might be "why are you upset?"

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#17

Post by lostlogin »

btown wrote: post #7

> Nurses are instructed to stick to a script on phone calls and give no more than two to three pieces of advice, Capulong and other nurses said, which means they may sometimes need to decide whether to withhold advice or face a performance evaluation hearing. > Another nurse speaking on condition of anonymity said “AI did not understand our job and would grade us wrong all the time.” It's always worth remembering Goo…

> Nurses are instructed to stick to a script on phone calls and give no more than two to three pieces of advice

So stupid. If you had ever made a phone call to a patient, or their family member, you’d soon realise how bad this is.

You need to talk to the patient and something a family member too. Be too hasty and you cause more harm than good.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#18

Post by doodlebugging »

This problem with workplace AI interfering with nurses ability to manage healthcare obligations for their clients is not confined to Kaiser. UHC has also introduced the AI surveillance tools and are using it to do similar things.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#19

Post by indoorfish »

BeetleB wrote: post #14
14 wrote: post #6

I would love to learn the cost of the AI versus how many new workers they could afford to hire and get more calls done. But I assume the end goal will be full replacement of human workers once the AI has had enough time to learn the job.

The AI is a lot cheaper. Kaiser nurses are amongst the highest paid in the nation.

How dare the people who take of the sick and dying be paid well. Unacceptable waste that must be optimized!

We're liberating them from work so they can focus on what matters

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#20

Post by Terr_ »

munk-a wrote: post #5

> "Nurses fear that having long calls can lead to bad performance reviews" > A company spokesperson said, "Kaiser Permanente does not use Average Handle Time to assess agent performance" So uh, average time wasn't raised as a concern, calls beyond a certain threshold was. I wish this semantic discrepancy was better highlighted in the article.

There's definitely a lot of room for weasel-wording there, where the metric really being used isn't the mathematical mean, but punishes people just the same.
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