RPA Shifts the Focus Back to Patients in a Variety of Healthcare Fields
When we think of healthcare, we often think of visiting our doctor or the hospital. But healthcare services encompass so much more, such as dental care, optometry, physical therapy, chiropractic, and massage therapy.
Each and every one of these is dedicated to focusing on patient care, but at the same time, each has an increasingly complex administrative load to deal with. Robotic process automation (RPA) can alleviate that administrative burden and help you put your focus back on your patients.
What Is RPA?
RPA is a technology that uses software “bots” that are programmed to complete specific tasks. These can be standalone tasks or a series of tasks that make up an entire process. The key is to implement RPA in the back-office and front-office in strategic areas in such a way that staff is freed up to focus their time and energy on high-value tasks that are directly related to patient care and nurturing patient relationships.
Challenges Faced by Healthcare Providers
Let’s get specific about the challenges faced by all healthcare providers, regardless of the field in which they operate. These challenges primarily come down to three main areas:
Experience, Knowledge, Expertise
EDI is not a monolithic discipline. Different industries have different data interchange requirements and must adhere to different regulations and standards. A vendor that understands one sector is not guaranteed to be knowledgeable about another.
- Patient management
- Data management
- Account management
All three of these areas of management are heavily reliant on numerous tedious, repetitive tasks that are time-consuming and prone to error when performed manually. However, when these tasks are automated, the result is processes that are done in a fraction of the time and are error-free, while staff and healthcare providers have more time to spend with patients.
Benefits of RPA in Healthcare
The benefits of RPA in healthcare are many and they have a significant impact on the ability of healthcare providers to offer the highest level of care. These benefits include:
- Easier appointment booking and tracking
- Quicker access to test results
- Increased patient participation
- Higher patient satisfaction
- Improved patient relationships
- Superior patient outcomes
- Reduced overtime worked
- Lower stress levels for healthcare providers and their staff
- Easy scalability for when patient loads increase
RPA in Healthcare Use Cases
Regardless of what medical field you are in, RPA can help in a variety of ways. There are many use cases associated with RPA in healthcare. Here are some examples.
Simplified Appointment Scheduling
The process of scheduling patient appointments is faced with challenges, whether the patients schedule their appointments online or the appointments are scheduled in the office. In some cases, there is a need to:
- Refer to patient data
- Align with the healthcare provider’s/clinic’s schedule
- Access insurance information
- Take into consideration other types of data, such as financial statements
Checking these various data sources and cross-referencing them to come up with the ideal date and time for the appointment is a time-consuming process when done manually. However, an RPA bot can check all these sources within seconds and find the earliest date and time that works when taking all relevant factors into account.
Patient Recall and Reactivation
Patients are notorious for neglecting to schedule their next appointment or following up with their dentist, optometrist, or other healthcare providers. Sending out reminder calls and texts manually is difficult, and many practices now have automated reminders. RPA can take this a step further by:
- Personalizing those reminders
- Creating and implementing a reminder campaign
- Reaching out to patients who haven’t been in in a long time
- Determining how often a patient needs to be contacted based on their health history
In fact, no matter what type of patient communication you need to implement, RPA can automate it for the greatest impact and the best ROI.
Streamlined Invoice Processing
Manually processing patient invoices is extremely time-consuming. The larger the healthcare company, the more challenging the task. With RPA, a bot can be programmed to automate the collection and processing of up to 90% of a healthcare provider’s invoices. This eliminates human error that inevitably makes its way into manual invoice processing and reduces the amount of disruption the business faces.
Take Advantage of RPA
Adopting RPA to improve patient, data, and account management is critical to the success of any healthcare provider, regardless of the field in which they operate. Best of all, you can customize your RPA solution to align with the specific needs of your healthcare practice.
To do this the right way, you need to take the time to define your operational, business and patient care strategies and then determine which processes are the best candidates for automation, starting with the two or three top candidates and expanding from there as needed.
To find out more about what RPA can do for your healthcare practice and how we can help, book a discovery call with a member of Tangentia’s automation team today.
