Introduction
Robotic Process Automation or RPA is now a common, if not standardized, addition to business environments across all industries and at any size. The healthcare industry in particular sees very minimal distancing from traditionally practiced methods and protocols. Additionally the healthcare industry is central to aggressive and large scale data flows of sensitive information, a single error could have long term repercussions and in some instances, even cost a life.
Introducing an RPA system into a healthcare environment offers the industry an opportunity to automate a lot of the repetitive processes that would normally require human intervention. It is estimated the reshaping of healthcare using emerging technologies like RPA can create between USD $350 billion and $410 billion in annual value by 2025. Especially around data management, RPA implementation offers the healthcare industry an opportunity to save over USD $2.1 billion annually that would be spent on poorly managed manual tasks.
Top Benefits of RPA in Healthcare
- Appointment Scheduling
Collecting patient information can be a tedious job when conducted manually and across thousands of patients every day. Cross referencing requests with doctor availability without virtual intervention could create mishaps. Introducing RPA into this environment offers healthcare organizations an opportunity to not only collect data and queries quicker, but repurpose staff towards higher level activities. Since data is captured correctly on the first attempt and saved in a digital space, referring back to the same is also a simple process.
- Managing Investment Claims
Insurance organizations spend between USD $6 million and USD $24 million to fix errors around data entry. The growing number of documents and forms that must be filled in to validate a claim leave room for errors and missed information. This time intensive process can be substituted by RPA intervention. As the process to manage an insurance claim is standardized, RPA is able to take users through the step by step process ensuring all relevant information is collected and verified. This also helps minimize the number of fraudulent insurance claims.
- Maintaining Regulatory Protocols
RPA intervention leaves little room to deviate from the required structures and formats of healthcare activities. This is especially useful at the time of an audit. Keeping all activities uniform also helps quickly detect irregularities and address lapses in efficiency around existing protocols. The bots tend to document all information in structured logs to help with the same.
Conclusion
Other benefits include moving from manual data entry on pen and paper to a consolidated digital vault of information, offering better, all-round employee satisfaction and reducing the investment needs around staffing and other complementary costs. Improving the patients experience when interacting with the healthcare institution is how patients distinguish between their preferred healthcare providers. The easier it is for them to come in, receive a diagnosis, treatment and be discharged, the more likely they are to recommend the institution to others and revisit should the need arise.
In order to implement the best practices, organizations offering RPA services or Robotic Process Automation consulting services are able to customize implementation requirements based on desired outcome. At times of heavy migration, it is always advisable to bring in a professional.
