Automation is becoming increasingly vital for healthcare businesses attempting to keep up with consumer expectations and competition as the world gets more computerized. In addition, automation is being used by businesses of all sizes and across industries to boost organizational efficiencies and streamline time-consuming operations. As a result, the pressure on healthcare CEOs to promote digital transformation, reduce operations, and boost team performance has increased dramatically.

According to a recent report, the United States healthcare sector loses $140 billion per year due to inadequate administration of basic internal processes.

This guide gives a high-level overview of automation, covering issues such as:

• How automation improves healthcare efficiency and value

• The key technology that can assist healthcare organizations in automating their processes

• Best Practices to get started

Around 75% of worldwide data and analytics decision-makers say their companies are investing in automation somehow, and more than half say they use or plan to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) soon.

Among the many advantages of automation are:

• Transparency for subject matter experts

• Supply chain and business process optimization

• Using a capability-driven approach to tackle business problems

• Improving the user experience

Automation, in particular, plays an important role in encouraging efficiency and increasing ROI in healthcare. It can, for example, shorten the revenue cycle, lower claim denials, improve supply chain planning and execution, and increase customer interactions with your call center.

Enterprises frequently approach automation through a technological lens, such as robotic process automation (RPA), and then declare themselves “completely automated.” These companies were looking for a specific answer and, in most cases, are pushing technology beyond its limits.

Intelligent automation is achieved by integrating automation concepts and technologies rather than a single technology working alone. While traditional digital process automation platforms or process orchestration can achieve partial automation, intelligent automation occurs at the junction of technologies like RPA and AI.

Robotic Process Automation

To undertake high-volume, repeated operations previously performed by humans, RPA uses software integrated with AI and ML capabilities. Optical character recognition, legacy application connection, online scraping, desktop recording, and API connectors are the five key tenants of RPA that drive human-system interactions. These tenants give robotic solutions for daily tasks that are repetitious. As a result, RPA can be used to integrate old applications, which brings value to your organization by reducing costs and speeding up time to market.

While many healthcare companies believe in the potential of RPA, many are having difficulty scaling programs beyond pilot studies. As a result, many healthcare executives are teaming up with clever automation professionals who also have extensive healthcare experience.

RPA in Healthcare Has a Lot of Potential:

• Improve the digital data environment:

Multiple systems are digitizing patient information. This data must be appropriately moved as new record systems are deployed. Patient information must also be recorded accurately and frequently repeated across applications. RPA can ensure that records are constantly accurate and current.

• Improve the revenue cycle:

Inefficient claims administration because of data difficulties, such as missing patient information, costs hospitals in the United States millions of dollars in denial write-offs each year. RPA can reduce this risk by improving data management and providing accurate, timely account updates.

• Accurate utilization management improves decision-making:

Effective utilization management is crucial because efficient patient care decision-making helps manage healthcare costs. Intelligent automation can improve case evaluation and decision-making accuracy and timeliness.

• Improve patient outcomes by streamlining patient screening and diagnostics:

RPA can improve patient outcomes and reduce risk in hospital testing facilities by increasing accuracy, efficiency, and production.

Artificial Intelligence

Focus on platforms that have democratized key features for broad scale adoption when pursuing AI at an enterprise scale. To deploy apps at scale, you should construct cognitive building blocks (capabilities). For example, you may use AI to educate your systems to spot patterns, interpret all types of data, and make intelligent recommendations to streamline processes. AI can also predict outcomes and recommend the next best actions for your corporate decision-makers, allowing you to skip time-consuming meetings and speed up project and process completion.

RPA software is used to conduct repeated activities by interpreting, triggering reactions, and communicating with other systems. You can use RPA to eliminate human procedures, reduce the time it takes to complete a task, and save money as your company moves toward intelligent automation. However, holistic, automated execution is still required.

Healthcare organizations frequently approach automation via the viewpoint of a specific technology, such as RPA or AI. This tries to fit a solution into a technological box and stretch it beyond its original capabilities.

At its heart, AI is intelligent; it is built and refined to make intelligent decisions. However, the intelligence behind the action is not the real actor. You need something to perform the task if you approach automation from a larger perspective and develop systems to make a suggestion, provide possible outcomes, or extract/transform information. Process management and RPA can help with this.

RPA is the keyboard’s hands, yet, it is designed to perform repetitive operations repeatedly, not to make intelligent decisions. Organizations can achieve significant gains in terms of process efficiency if AI systems are employed to work in tandem with RPA technology. For example, you can use AI to educate your systems to spot patterns, interpret all types of data, and make intelligent recommendations to streamline processes.

3 Tips for Successful Revenue Cycle Management in Healthcare Automation:

1. Enable enterprise-wide, holistic efficiencies:

Utilize your technology platforms for what they were built to do to create purpose-driven architectures. The goal is to establish a center of excellence (CoE) that covers all aspects of intelligent automation (rather than individual initiatives that fight for budget). This method optimizes your overall solution while also allowing you to establish repeating solution patterns and reusable components across your whole organization.

2. Automate in stages, beginning with solid data:

Automation adds complications that must be constantly checked for efficiency and compliance. It’s critical to identify a single source of truth before evaluating prospective automation options that fully utilize your data while deciding how to govern data automation. Then you’re ready to create a roadmap and figure out how to add more skills. You may achieve ROI and build a more sustainable environment by using automation in stages.

3. Ensure successful adoption:

It’s critical to interact with different departments in your company and answer any concerns. This fosters a sense of ownership while treating automation as a common resource.

The digital transformation is fueled by automation. Only a few corporate procedures are still unaffected by automation today. Automation is being pursued by healthcare organizations for various reasons, including increasing consumer satisfaction and engagement, focusing employee attention on other business-critical tasks rather than repetitive ones, increasing capacity, and improving efficiency. However, it is important to note that the human workforce is still an important part of the equation. People will continue to work alongside automation as it becomes more widely adopted, discovering new ways to improve procedures. To position an organization for future success, leadership must be open to new ideas and invest in new technologies.