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Key Highlights
Robotic process automation is the answer for healthcare enterprises looking to improve patient outcomes, manage costs, deliver better working conditions for staff, and complete enterprise-wide digital transformation. In many cases, the return on investment (ROI) from developing custom RPA solutions is so significant it frees up vital organizational resources for other mission-critical expenditures.
The U.S. healthcare industry is facing a severe shortage of skilled workers—the American Hospital Association estimates a nationwide shortage of 124,000 physicians by 2033. It will need to hire 200,000 full-time nurses to meet rising care demands.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these issues in recent years. Staff burnout reached an all-time high in 2021, with over 63% of physicians reporting at least one instance compared with just 38.2% the previous year.
Unfortunately for many providers, things have not improved across 2022—healthcare ranks lowest of all industries regarding satisfaction with pay and overall work experience. Many healthcare service providers feel stressed out, overworked, and overburdened by their daily responsibilities.
While the adoption of telehealth and remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions are just a couple of the innovations slowly helping to improve things, the implementation of robotic process automation (RPA) is the solution.
In the coming years, the most successful healthcare enterprises will be the ones that embrace digital transformation and leverage automation to make better use of data to deliver better medical outcomes for patients, working conditions for staff, and higher profit margins for investors.
RPA uses intelligent digital technologies to streamline core medical operations, administrative, HR, insurance, compliance, and other processes to increase speed, accuracy, and reliability.
This article explains why the most innovative healthcare organizations deliver custom RPA software solutions.
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in Healthcare?
Robotic process automation (RPA) uses rules-based, pre-programmed software agents, devices, and platforms to perform core operational processes across healthcare organizations.
RPA solutions can be integrated into existing software solutions or designed as stand-alone programs. While the word “robotic” often brings to mind an application such as Boston Dynamics, dog-like mobile agility robot Spot, in most cases, RPA in healthcare does not involve robotics but instead refers to the automation of digital technologies.
The best part about RPA is that these solutions can run 24/7 around the clock, automatically culling data from disparate unstructured sources and executing rules-based tasks in a highly structured and efficient manner. Robotic process automation allows your organization to get away from time-consuming manual processes and embrace operationalization and automation to improve efficiency and productivity at scale.
RPA solutions come in all shapes and sizes but orchestrate activities across your technology stack to deliver more seamless and streamlined operations. Intelligent software agents process transactions reliably, without error, and without ever tiring from added complexity. Your RPA solutions will link internal and external IT systems, patient data, and the vital operations driving your organization’s success.
Here are some elements of RPA solutions in healthcare:
- Your Organization’s Technology Stack: Enterprise RPA is built using programming languages such as Python, .Net, and Java, as well as relational databases and front-end technologies like JavaScript. Develop custom RPA solutions by improving or adding new applications to your healthcare tech stack.
- Business Intelligence: Your RPA solution integrates disparate datasets across different departments to deliver actionable insights to propel accurate business intelligence. Bring all the other pieces of information together with a custom system that fuels cross-functional collaboration in pursuit of excellence and shared goals.
- Holistic and Dynamic: RPA solutions in healthcare are multi-layered and feature recorders, extensions, bots, a robot control unit, and a development studio. Recorders allow bots to learn about human interactions with software. Extensions allow bots to extract and make data usable across different elements of the tech stack. Control units serve as an admin panel to control functions, and your development studio is where all automation is managed from a single dashboard.
Examples of RPA Use Cases in Healthcare
RPA solutions can be customized to handle just about any task required by any department across the healthcare enterprise.
Here are a few examples of RPA use cases in clinical healthcare practice environments:
- Revenue Cycle Management: From authorization, coding, and remittance to everything else, RPA is the answer to optimizing your organization’s revenue cycle to ensure long-term profitability gains.
- Medical Claims Processing: U.S. patients and medical providers pay an estimated $496 billion in billing and insurance-related (BIR) costs annually. RPA cuts the time it takes to process medical claims from 85 seconds on average to under 3 seconds or less. Many systems are so fast that they can dramatically improve insurance claims’ reliability and accuracy, leading to 30% in costs and the opportunity to automate more than 70% of all activities connected to medical claims processing.
- Supply Chain Harmonization: Healthcare supply chains are large and often quite unwieldy due to how many moving pieces, vendors, compliance obligations, and other details are involved. RPA delivers a culture of continuous quality improvement by measuring, evaluating, and optimizing supply chain functions in real-time.
- Business Intelligence and Forecasting: Data-driven decision-making is transforming healthcare at scale, but the key is integrating all the different data streams your organization generates. RPA breaks down barriers and creates the foundation for incorporating organizational data.
- Healthcare Technology Stack Integration: Clean up your organization’s administrative processes by better integrating clinical, operations, HR technologies, and resources.
- Payment Processing: RPA in healthcare enables claims management systems to be queried alongside medical coding systems to expedite payment processing services’ accuracy and reliability. RPA and AI automate data aggregation optimizing payment processing.
- Data-Entry, Migration, and Governance: Data governance is a front-of-mind priority. Achieving success requires more than simply a better approach to training staff—Automate key data processes to unlock enterprise value and reduce human errors.
- Appointment Scheduling: Way back in 2019, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 88% of patients booked appointments using time-consuming manual processes. Missed appointments cost providers up to $150 million annually. Today automated appointment scheduling services are becoming the gold standard as patients and providers embrace telehealth.
- Compliance Documentation: As healthcare organizations have embraced digital transformation, they have found themselves in the crosshairs of criminal organizations. RPA offers clear benefits for improving cybersecurity and enhancing data management activities to safeguard personal health information (PHI). Role-based access controls can be programmed directly into RPA business logic to ensure compliance standards are upheld every time.
Robotic process automation is a game changer that offers measurable advantages for every department and practices specialty across the healthcare industry. Improving speed, reliability, and accuracy, matched with increases in worker retention metrics and patient satisfaction, make RPA investment a potent form of business transformation.
Benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to
Transform Care Delivery
Robotic process automation is the answer for healthcare enterprises looking to improve patient outcomes, manage costs, deliver better working conditions for staff, and complete enterprise-wide digital transformation.
In many cases, the return on investment (ROI) from developing custom RPA solutions is so significant that it frees up vital organizational resources for other mission-critical expenditures.
Here are some of the benefits RPA early adopters enjoy:
- RPA increases operational efficiency without increasing labor costs which often account for more than 60% of hospital budget costs.
- Human workers can focus on more beneficial tasks by shifting monotonous activities to robot agents.
- RPA solutions are low-cost and do not require specialized IT knowledge to deliver robust automation.
- Automated process automation tools increase knowledge sharing and cross-functional collaboration.
How RPA Drives Digital Transformation to Make Your Healthcare Organization More Competitive
Right now, your clinical care teams, administrative staff, and executive decision-makers are wasting valuable time completing simple, repeatable tasks using paper-driven manual processes.
Robotic process automation drives competitive advantage by reducing the need for your top talent to waste valuable time and human capital on these inefficient activities.
Top enterprises are innovating across the medical practice landscape by delivering custom software solutions to automate, optimize, and streamline core tasks. RPA empowers your teams to stop wasting valuable time handling jobs better suited for software.
The future is bright for healthcare enterprises that can trim the fat, lean into tough challenges, and deliver accurate technology solutions to transform their practice environments.
Change is never simple or easy, but implementing robotic process automation is a powerful method of driving digital transformation to unlock a more agile and resilient enterprise.
Instead of continuing to do things the old way, it may be time to do them the smarter way. RPA can help.
Ready to Get Started?
Perfect! Asahi Technologies delivers industry-leading robotic process automation (RPA) solutions for healthcare enterprises. Get in touch today to learn more about our custom healthcare software development services.
Our RPA implementation services help you understand your core business needs today and deliver intelligent automation solutions to secure your competitive advantage. Build a forward-looking RPA roadmap to implement your technology stack, automate key operational processes, and integrate data across disparate platforms and software services.
No matter where your organization is in your RPA journey—from assessing current needs to implementing your long-term vision—our automation & IT consulting services offer the foundation your team needs to propel enterprise-wide digital transformation.
Stay ahead of the game with our helpful resources
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Vinod
Founder & Chief Strategist
Vinod is a deeply devoted digital health enthusiast who believes technology is a great enabler that provides the key to unlocking a better world. He is driven by a singular goal: to help healthcare organizations leverage technology to deliver better digital services for patients, providers, payers, and other community health stakeholders. His expansive computer science domain expertise, humanity, and commitment to community are major assets for healthcare, medical, pharmaceutical, and life science enterprises.
