Robotic Process Automation, as one of the leading technologies in 2023, has truly turned out to be a game-changer for the healthcare industry. With simple deployment tactics, healthcare organizations can advance their patient care across departments. But, prior to deployment, healthcare organizations should choose the best RPA vendor, examine the workflows of the processes, identify any bottlenecks, and zoom down to the appropriate processes for automation. It might be anything, from a straightforward email responder to considerably more complex procedures like clinical trials.
Remember, only well-thought RPA implementation can justify the investment by maximizing productivity and returns!
Examining the Potential of Automation
According to a study by the Healthcare Information Management Systems and Society, processing 30 billion healthcare transactions annually costs roughly $250 billion. However, roughly 86 percent of all errors in the US-only healthcare sector are administrative in nature.
If electronic claim submissions are implemented, there might be a $177 million savings in the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare Index and a potential time saving of one minute for each transaction. Hospitals today need a strong automated process with such data.
The existing healthcare system has to deal with a number of difficulties in synchronizing data from diverse internal and external sources, including medical records, financial records, clinical applications, laboratory systems, insurance portals, and other atypical systems.
To solve the issue of overwhelmed and overworked administrative staff, RPA in healthcare is critically needed. The urgent need to switch to more advanced digital technology will allow the administrative team to concentrate on duties with higher added value while avoiding needless workload.
Exploring the RPA Use Cases for 2023
To explore the true potential of RPA, let’s examine the top 10 use cases of the same that will shape the future of healthcare in 2023:
Use Case 1: Arranging patient appointments with RPA.
Based on any prior diagnoses, the doctor’s availability, the patient’s location, and other variables, including insurance information, the RPA bot schedules the patients’ appointments. Additionally, it offers modern front-office assistance as well as automated data collection and processing. Reminders are dispatched timely via text messages and emails with the help of an RPA-powered automated patient scheduling method.
According to a Harvard Medical Practice study, more than 90% of mistakes that resulted in adverse events were thought to be avoidable and were thought to be attributable to neglect in 70% of cases. The Ponemon Institute estimates that patient misidentification results in a loss of $17.4 million per hospital each year and costs the typical clinician almost 30 minutes of wasted time each shift. It also causes 35% of all medical claims to be denied.
These data make it very evident that RPA is required in the healthcare industry. Automation of patient registration dramatically decreases human error in the process and eliminates major patient misidentification problems.
Use Case 2: Processing of medical claims.
Once a patient schedules an appointment at a clinic or hospital, processing claims is once again a drawn-out procedure that requires many hand-offs before the final bill is created for payment. The use of RPA in the processing of healthcare claims can be advantageous because it frees administrative staff from important duties like assessing the risks associated with medical claims, tracking down patient records in applications, verifying patient data and insurance plans, and sending members’ explanations of benefits. RPA can complete the duties swiftly and accurately. The processing time for claims can be greatly decreased through automation.
Use Case 3: Post-treatment remote care.
RPA and bots can be used to automate repetitive customer support and remote care tasks, while machine learning and intelligent automation (IA) can be utilized to quickly and consistently answer repetitive inquiries. RPA can be used to offer specialized communication at precise points in the patient care plan by adhering to business principles.
The time of rest, recuperation, and rehabilitation is known as post-treatment care. Numerous healthcare facilities offer comprehensive care plans. However, meeting each patient’s particular needs might be difficult. RPA can be connected to a remote monitoring platform to track changes in a patient’s vital signs, including blood sugar levels and heart rates.
The built-in RPA bot can notify the patient to change their daily medication schedule and the physicians to take action if the situation warrants it. Additionally, the bots give notices of impending follow-up appointments, and reminders to take meds and eat healthily,
Use Case 4: Inventory management.
Keeping inventory under control is becoming more challenging as the number of medical gadgets and surgical tools increases. For medical staff, it involves not only more time but also more resources. Yet, a strong inventory management system that delivers real-time data on the status of medical supplies and places orders automatically can be built using RPA and IA. Users can analyze usage and purchase patterns to effectively manage hospital inventories.
Healthcare supply chain management procedures can be completely automated with RPA bots. From choosing the suppliers, placing the orders, discussing the status of the shipments, and generating invoices through managing the supplier connection, return and after-sales management, and even data transmission integration.
Use Case 5: Patient Data Security
Healthcare is a complex industry, just like any other, with a long list of federal laws and other regulations that are continuously changing. Maintaining moral operations devoid of fraud and waste requires adapting to these. For significant breaches, the fines for HIPAA infractions might reach more than $100,000. Moreover, studies show that up to 40% of health insurance claims may be denied owing to carelessness or non-compliance. When used correctly, RPA in the healthcare industry prevents data breaches and illegal access to patient records while maintaining each and every action within the apps, increasing visibility during audits.
Use Case 6: Telemedicine
Healthcare organizations are overburdened by the increasing patient flow that demands on-time care delivery. Telehealth and Telemedicine are hidden blessings in that case, as they help to overcome obstacles in the delivery of healthcare services caused by time, distance, and availability. In fact, 52.5% of clinicians agreed that it is more convenient for them to provide effective treatment with virtual healthcare check-ups than in-office treatment, 93% of clinicians believed that Telehealth is an “acceptable” method to lead the future, and 60% believed it is a “very effective” method of patient care overall. According to research, 85% of patients who use telemedicine services are happy with their overall level of medical care, which amply supports the rise of Telemedicine in 2023 as well.
Use Case 7: Retail Health
Forbes confirms that the market share for Retail Health clinics in primary care will increase tremendously. Patients will select retail health in 2023 because health systems are truly hampered by insufficient resources and fall short of matching retail’s elevated patient experiences. Retail health clinics grew by 21.5% between 2019 and 2020, driven initially by the demand for nearby, convenient COVID-19 testing locations and sustained by their capacity to offer easily accessible, no-appointment-required, practical, and affordable quality care. And all top retail giants will continue to fight for the top spot in the retail clinic market in 2023. Patients will swarm to retail health providers, thanks to their elevated patient experience game.
Use Case 8: Better Decision-Making
AI is enhancing telehealth by assisting doctors in providing a more accurate diagnosis. It aids in selecting a specialist and making treatment recommendations based on a patient’s PHI data, medications, and current symptoms, in addition to identifying high-risk illnesses and promptly informing the care provider or patients.
Also, clinicians are finding it difficult to find the time to stay current on the most recent medical research while still providing patient-centered treatment as a result of the vast amounts of health data that are being generated and their mounting workloads. Healthcare providers can swiftly harvest reliable, pertinent, evidence-based information that has been carefully selected by medical specialists by utilizing machine learning technology on the most recent biomedical data and electronic health records. This helps healthcare providers in making faster and better-informed decisions.
Use Case 9: Promotes Health Equity
In order to maintain equity and fairness in clinical research and data science, the healthcare IT sector has duly developed systems that support these ideal health outcomes for all. By encouraging data variety and transparency to solve health inequities, AI and machine learning algorithms can be trained to decrease or eliminate prejudice. For instance, reducing bias in healthcare research can aid in the fight against differences in health outcomes based on gender, color, ethnicity, or income level.
Use Case 10: Management Disparate Data Effectively
Healthcare data management is the process of obtaining, reviewing, and keeping patient records in order to provide end users with high-quality care and other healthcare-related services. To do this, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and RPA is used in healthcare data management, where it processes medical data using complex algorithms and procedures to carry out a variety of healthcare-related decision-making processes. Furthermore, there are many different formats and fragments of healthcare data. Hence, enterprises can combine diverse data sources and formats to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the people behind the data by employing AI and machine learning technology.
Conclusion
Some of the main qualities of RPA bots are simple setup, flawless performance, and 24-hour availability. With the aid of RPA, you may decrease operational expenses and human error while boosting productivity and enhancing patient care services. In the upcoming years, RPA, one of the fastest-growing technologies, will undoubtedly improve doctor-patient interactions by fusing AI and ML.
All you need to do is find the best RPA solutions provider if you want to make full use of RPA technology for your healthcare organization. And, who is better than the tech innovators – AutomationEdge?
Reach out to us for a free demo to experience the true magic of RPA in the healthcare industry!
Author Bio
Aboli Kakade
Marketing Executive at AutomationEdge. AutomationEdge is a hyper-automation company with RPA and IT automation, Conversational AI & Document Processing capabilities that provide RPA solutions in healthcare, banking, insurance, and IT organization.
