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The increase in people's life expectancy, the increase in the cost of treatments and the proliferation of chronic diseases create a “perfect storm” situation for healthcare providers. At this point, the Automation can play a unique role in addressing the most pressing health challenges.
Managing administrative and regulatory requirements can burden health budgets and limit the time that healthcare personnel spend at the center of their activity: patient care. Automation technologies can change this situation by eliminate much of the time and costs derived from administrative processes.But, in addition, they have the ability to improve one's own medical practice in aspects such as diagnosis, the application of treatments and the reduction of human errors.
In this guide, we review which functions of the healthcare activity are most likely to be automated and what benefits those organizations that consider it as a way to improve their performance and operational efficiency obtain.
Automation technologies eliminate a large part of the time and costs of administrative processes and improve medical practice itself in aspects such as diagnosis or treatment application.
AUTOMATION OF PATIENT-RELATED PROCESSES
· Effective appointment scheduling
· Communications with patients
· Patient records and records
· Request for registrations
· Complaints Management
AUTOMATION OF PROCESSES RELATED TO INTERNAL MANAGEMENT
· Financial processing
· Personnel Management
· Inventory Management
· Vendor Management
PATIENT-RELATED BENEFITS
· Improving the quality of care
· Increased patient satisfaction
· Speed and accuracy in medical diagnostics
BENEFITS RELATED TO INTERNAL MANAGEMENT
· Regulatory Compliance
· Error reduction
· Interoperability
· Higher employee satisfaction
· Cost reduction
Star processes for automation in healthcare
Care and care They are exclusively human faculties that cannot be digitized. But processes do, and by doing so, digital healthcare workers can support and increase the impact of human professionals with surprising results. These are some of the processes in which RPA has a lot to contribute to improving the healthcare sector.
Patient-related processes
Effective #Programación of dating
Scheduling patient appointments is an important part of any clinical practice. Healthcare staff spend a significant amount of their time scheduling future appointments, answering patient inquiries, and making follow-up calls to remind patients of upcoming appointments.
Automating appointment scheduling can free up crucial time for healthcare staff, thus optimizing the daily workflows to be more effective. Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence can be used to solve basic patient queries and book appointments. Such automation would also result in more efficient schedules than would allow the doctor to treat a larger number of patients.
By extracting data from documents, processing it and transferring it to other systems and formats with 100% accuracy, AI-powered RPA bots can improve processes in all functions of the patient relationship cycle, such as scheduling appointments, denying claims and billing.
Patients can schedule appointments without the intervention of hospital workers thanks to the use of RPA technology. In addition to eliminating the resource allocation requirement for programming, this application can improve relationships with patients by allowing them to schedule appointments more quickly.
By extracting data from documents, processing it and transferring it to other systems and formats with 100% accuracy, RPA bots with AI can improve processes across all functions of the patient relationship cycle.
#Comunicaciones with patients
Automation helps contact center agents quickly obtain patient or insured data. By activating RPA bots to execute requests, it is possible to focus on interacting with patients, resolving issues faster and follow up properly.
#Registros and patient records
The digitization of patient records is the link between the medical history of each patient and their current state, which favors consultation, treatment and monitoring in real time by different specialists.
Automation helps store, classify and organize all types of information to ensure its accessibility. The system will automatically categorize different data: contact information, medical history, treatment, subsequent visits... and will display the information to administrative or operational staff. There is no need to manually enter this information or worry about its accuracy, since RPA is more accurate than people and its margin of error is much lower.
#Solicitud patient discharge
Patient registration can be done from a web or mobile application with the help of a chatbot. Through a electronic form, the patient's main data can be collected directly in digital format to be later included in your medical record.
Thus begins a process of digital transformation and migration to a paperless environment in which patient data can be analyzed and, under certain criteria, can be automatically referred to some type of approval or alert.
In this way, RPA technology allows Streamline tasks so that patients have access to their medical records, billing information and appointment scheduling, etc. In addition, the capabilities of Front office allow robots to respond efficiently to patient requests.
Patient registration can be carried out from a web or mobile application with the help of a chatbot.
#Gestión of complaints
Claims processing takes up a large part of healthcare managers' time. It usually involves a series of sub-processes, from filling in data and filing claims, to evaluating them and dealing with appeals.
Not only can automation reduce the burden at this point, but it also helps to keep the process from errors. According to a report by Ernst and Young, automation in claims management improves processing turnover time by 75 to 85%. It also saves accumulated costs as a result of the denial of claims.
Processes related to internal management
#Procesamiento financial
El high volume of invoice processing involves repetitive manual tasks that can result in late and incorrect payments. In the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector, invoice processing involves multiple challenges, since it involves obtain consolidated data from various sources in the single financial database system. With the help of automation, it is possible to automatically process invoices once received.
The paper invoice format can be automated using OCR (Optical Character Recognition)) and, in addition, RPA can automate data entry, identify reconciliation errors and even incorporate the decision-making required for invoice processing. This minimizes the need for human intervention, allowing for end-to-end process automation from reception to payment.
Automation minimizes the need for human intervention by allowing end-to-end automation of the process from receipt to payment.
#Gestión of the staff
Storing and processing human resource information is a difficult task because it is time consuming and often tedious.
The good news is that the documentation of administrative staff and medical professionals can be placed in the hands of a document manager that protects your viewing, making it only accessible to Human Resources staff authorized. It also allows you to go updating documentation as employee conditions change (sick leave certificates, maternity/paternity leave, vacation requests...).
An RPA system can collect and organize all the information required by the Human Resources department:The employee's history, payroll, reimbursement, or level of training can be classified and stored through the employee. This improvement in the productivity of employees in the Human Resources department allows them to focus on higher-value aspects of work for which automation still has no answer.
In addition, automation is not only centralize all information in one accessible place 24/7, but rather custody over time.
The productivity of employees in the Human Resources department allows them to focus on higher-value aspects of work for which automation still has no answer.
Inventory #Gestión
Have the necessary supplies for medical practice it is fundamental given the nature of its activity: human health.
Automation allows you to create a digital workforce to download, update and communicate inventory levels while providing constant visibility, eliminating reporting errors and ensure optimal levels of critical medical supplies.
#Gestión vendors/Supply chain automation
The acquisition of medicines, equipment and medical instruments necessary for the operation of a hospital and the care of its patients requires a lot of time and effort. Having information concentrated in a single system helps manage purchases, contracts and suppliers. Through RPA, administrative employees in the health sector will be able to automate procedures to optimize the management of the invoice approval cycle with suppliers and Count invoices in a single process, saving time and effort. An automated process that controls the different steps within the workflow will save response times for the activity, in addition to minimizing involuntary human errors.
Administrative employees will be able to automate procedures to optimize the management of the invoice approval cycle with suppliers.
Advantages and benefits
In an industry where Data accuracy can be a matter of life and death, the automation of data entry and the digitization of records eliminates human errors, speeds up processing time and improves clinical decision-making.
Above all, by creating next-level efficiencies, AI-driven automation lays the foundation for the healthcare model of the future, in which greater precision and empathy are the path to the next generation of care. These are the main benefits and advantages it provides:
Patient-Related Benefits
#Mejora for quality of care
One of the main concerns with the introduction of automation in health care is the misconception that it will replace doctors and nurses.
Quite the contrary, the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare allows health professionals to automate repetitive tasks. Since doctors can focus on patient-centered activities, automation automatically improves the quality of healthcare.
Automation empowers healthcare providers to provide better services, including a greater efficiency, improved patient management and greater agility in retrieving your data. This simplifies care processes through patient indexing, data entry and medical history. Automation in healthcare also allows health providers closely monitor patients, remind them of follow-up appointments and bill more quickly. Getting rid of conventional and ineffective processes increases productivity and improves the quality of care.
Automation empowers healthcare providers to provide better services, including greater efficiency, improved patient management and greater agility in retrieving their data.
#Mayor patient satisfaction
RPA bots automate patient care and make it easier for the care team to manage inquiries. The use of the robotic process automation (RPA) system in the Front And the Back Office allows healthcare providers to provide better service.
Automated care plans also result in greater patient satisfaction. Regular medication reminders and follow-up visits through the use of various communication tools improve care and guarantee that the patient sticks to the plan, resulting in better health outcomes. It is also possible to detect any deviations and health professionals can carry out timely interventions, either virtually through telemedicine or through in-person visits to ensure the best possible results, as well as greater clinical efficiency.
Regular medication reminders and follow-up visits using various communication tools improve care and ensure that the patient sticks to the plan.
#Velocidad and precision in medical diagnostics
The time variable is critical when it comes to diagnoses, especially if they are serious illnesses, since a delay puts the patient at greater risk of worsening or succumbing to the disease. In trying to speed up the process, healthcare workers can easily make mistakes that result in inaccurate results.
The automated diagnostic process, however, offers faster and more accurate results, facilitating early detection which benefits patients in a number of ways. It allows for early treatment, making it difficult for the disease to progress. With technological advances such as AI in healthcare, it is easier to determine if a patient has a particular disease. In most cases, this occurs before symptoms appear.
What's more: automation helps detect the patient's deviation from the recommended care plan, facilitating the intervention of doctors in real time.
With technological advances such as AI in healthcare, it is easier to determine if a patient has a particular disease.
Benefits related to internal management
Regulatory #Cumplimiento
RPA helps healthcare providers track and document each step of the process in structured log files for meet the requirements of any external audit. In addition, it ensures and protects the confidentiality of data by leaving it in the hands of bots.
#Reducción of errors
Automation practically eliminates the chances of error related to human errors, since bots follow pre-programmed instructions in rule-based operations. Therefore, the rule-based procedure will be error-free if the programmer did not previously make any mistakes while writing the code.
#Interoperabilidad
The healthcare business relies heavily on paper records and is in urgent need of digital transformation. By digitizing healthcare, bots digitize patient information to store it electronically so that doctors and patients can access it online.
RPA bots can automate the process of extracting data from legacy systems and inserting it into digital systems.
When data needs to be migrated for another purpose, such as medical research, a specific RPA bot can take care of it. Bots securely extract data and communicate between any system, following complex privacy rules and process activators.
Bots securely extract data and communicate between any system.
#Mayor employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction can be affected by assigning tedious work to the team, which can lead to higher employee turnover with the hiring and onboarding processes that this entails and reducing productivity. Thanks to automation, the workload is lower and employee satisfaction is multiplying.
#Reducción of costs
The cost of setting up automated processes may seem high, but looking at it in the long term, automation generates significant savings for healthcare organizations. According to Deloitte research, 51 to 60% of hospitals could experience negative margins by 2025 if they fail to achieve productivity growth.
In addition, it is well known that the healthcare model is resource intensive. The increase in age-related diseases and the demand for health professionals directly translates into increased healthcare costs.. Replacing intensive manual tasks that are performed using automation technology elevates employees to higher-functioning roles. This way, they can make use of their clinical expertise while saving significant healthcare costs.
According to Deloitte research, 51 to 60% of hospitals could experience negative margins by 2025 if they fail to achieve productivity growth.
Adea Service
The healthcare industry provides one of the most important services for people. While automation isn't the cure for every ailment, it's certainly a vaccine for many challenges faced by organizations operating in such a critical sector.
Adea can become a long-term partner with extensive experience in implementing intelligent automation in the health sector. We maintain a constant knowledge of emerging technologies so that organizations advance their digital agenda and can improve their workflows and, consequently, their productivity.
Since 1999, at Adea, we have been designing document management and process optimization strategies tailored to each organization. Throughout all these years, our commitment to innovation and continuous commitment to the most advanced technology has allowed us to accompany our clients in their digital transformation, also helping them to comply with regulations related to data processing and facilitating the management of their internal processes in the most agile, efficient and personalized way.
Our experience in document management, facilities and state-of-the-art technology allows us to offer a completely fluid service along the entire value chain: from the design of automated processes and their technological implementation to the custody, management and destruction of the physical documents involved.
