Most healthcare automation today still starts in the same place: tasks. Automate intake. Automate documents. Automate phone calls. Automate eligibility checks.
That approach makes sense. Tasks are concrete, they’re measurable, and they’re where real operational pain shows up first. When you’re trying to introduce AI into a complex, regulated environment, starting there is often the only practical option.
But as I’ve spent more time inside real deployments, a pattern has become hard to ignore. Even when task-level automation works, the overall system often still feels fragile. Patients still get stuck. Staff still chase handoffs. Leaders still hesitate to trust automation end to end.
This isn’t a failure of automation. It’s a signal about where automation needs to go next.
Healthcare runs on journeys, not checklists
Healthcare doesn’t operate as a checklist of independent actions. It operates as a journey – one that unfolds over time, across systems, teams, and decisions.
Most delays don’t happen because a single task failed. They happen because something between tasks broke down. A document was processed, but no one followed up. A call was completed, but the outcome didn’t trigger the next step. Eligibility was verified, but scheduling never happened.
Task-level automation can make individual steps faster. It doesn’t automatically make the journey more reliable.
Why the journey matters – even if we’re not there yet
Journey-level reliability is not where most healthcare organizations or vendors – including us – are today. And that’s okay.
Journeys are harder than tasks. They require context, coordination, and accountability across transitions. They demand systems that can track progress, handle exceptions, and adapt as real-world conditions change.
But they also represent where the real value ultimately lies. Because patients don’t measure their experience by how fast a task was completed. They measure it by how smoothly they move forward.
The direction the market is moving
As healthcare AI advances, I see the conversation slowly shifting. Away from “How do we automate this step?” and toward “What needs to happen for this patient to keep moving?”
That shift doesn’t require replacing task-level automation, it builds on it. Task automation becomes the foundation. Journey thinking becomes the organizing principle. Instead of isolated tools doing their part and stopping, systems begin to carry context across steps, trigger the next action when conditions are met, surface when progress stalls, and make responsibility explicit across transitions.
This is not a switch that gets flipped. It’s a direction organizations move toward over time.
What this looks like in practice today
In practice, aspiring toward the patient journey means asking different questions – even while still operating at the task level: Where do patients get stuck most often? What happens after this task completes? Who owns the handoff if something goes wrong? How would we even know if a patient stopped moving forward?
These questions don’t require perfect orchestration. They require intent. They shape how automation is deployed, evaluated, and extended.
Why this framing matters now
I don’t think the industry is “there” yet. But I do think it’s increasingly clear that this is the direction forward.
In healthcare, progress isn’t defined by how many steps are automated – it’s defined by how consistently patients move through care.
I’m curious how others are thinking about this. When you look at your own automation efforts, do they still stop at tasks, or are you starting to design with the patient journey in mind? How are you framing that transition internally?
