Healthcare systems worldwide are continuously criticised for the falling standard of care, long waiting times, negligence, and rising costs. Ultimately, it is the patients and their families who suffer. Robotic process automation (RPA) enables healthcare organisations to focus more on patient care than the backend paperwork, which is time-consuming, leading to long wait times and unnecessary cost increases. Clinical negligence costs are already increasing at unsustainable levels, equalling billions of dollars annually. As quality care is often dependent upon the availability and accuracy of patient data, RPA can help in these aspects by automating data collection and its transmission.
Challenges in Healthcare
Healthcare organisations face numerous challenges:
Substantial Cost Increases
Several reasons account for the increasing cost of healthcare, such as incorrect treatment, operational costs, and comorbidity.
Poor Quality of Care
Due to the non-availability of accurate information or delays in obtaining the information, patients are subject to poor quality of care.
Data Management
Hospitals and other healthcare organisations are producing large amounts of data (big data) that traditional processes cannot handle.
Claims Processing
Processing all health insurance claims timely is a time-consuming process, making it prone to errors which can result in lawsuits.
Long Wait Times
Lack of information sharing within the departments and other stakeholders increases patients’ time to get the proper treatment.
Compliance
The increasing regulation of healthcare organisations forces them to dedicate resources to ensuring compliance rather than patient care.
Use Cases of RPA in Healthcare
RPA is useful in almost every aspect of healthcare, such as:
Insurance Claims Processing
Processing patients’ insurance claims is a time-consuming process requiring a dedicated team. A healthcare organisation can greatly benefit from utilising these resources in patient care or other areas which truly create value. RPA bots can be useful in insurance claims processing, including initial claim verification, engaging the insurance company, and processing the claim. Several organisations report reducing the processing time to a few seconds from several minutes.
Discharge Instructions
Research indicates that patients fail to understand the instructions during the discharge process, leading to failure of the post-discharge medication or attending the follow-up appointment. Given the burden on healthcare employees, they are unlikely to follow up with the patients themselves. RPA can play a vital role in automating the entire discharge process. Patients are automatically sent emails containing the discharge instructions, appointment dates, or tests.
Audit
Like any other organisation, the healthcare industry must undertake audits which can be financial or process related. Completing these audits requires dedicated resources and considerable time. As audits are routine, invaluable resources are tied to this process throughout the year. RPA can automate all key areas of the audit process by obtaining data from several sources, checking for inconsistencies, and then generating reports to be used by the relevant stakeholders.
Communication
Without effective communication, healthcare organisations cannot deliver quality care. RPA can automate the communication process, ensuring that communication silos cannot hamper the seamless flow of information and disrupt critical organisational objectives. The timely availability of the desired information can prevent duplication of care and ensure the right treatment. RPA can be implemented to automate responses to patients, vendors, or even own staff queries.
What’s the Next Step for You?
Contact us if you are a healthcare organisation seeking help in identifying key areas where RPA can help or already have a solution in mind. Agile Managex Technologies offers customised RPA solutions, consulting, and more worldwide. With a growing customer base of RPA clients and a talented workforce, we can help deploy bots that meet your requirements most efficiently.
Industries We Serve
Previous
Next
