In this blog, get a comprehensive idea of what RPA is and its benefits in the healthcare industry. Additionally, have a look at some of the use cases.
What is RPA
RPA (Robotics Process Automation) is a form of business process automation that handles repetitive rule-based tasks by mimicking human actions.
We use the software to understand what’s on a screen, navigate the systems, and extract the data. Additionally, robots will work round the clock without tiredness and can handle large amounts of data.
It uses AI and ML to learn and improve the manual process to reduce the workloads of employees. RPA solutions will save companies time and money while enhancing productivity.
According to a report by Global Market Insights, the Robotics Processing Automation market will likely reach 5 billion by 2024.
Why RPA in Healthcare providers
As we all know Healthcare is one of the major aspects of daily life. This comprises medical devices, insurance, and medical equipment. The Healthcare industry has many sensitive interactions with customers, including repetitive tasks.
ERPs and HR applications will be challenging tasks in the healthcare industry.
RPA will reduce healthcare administration costs by automating repetitive tasks that will save time and ensure accuracy. This will also reduce the paperwork cost and will also help the healthcare professionals to maintain the records, manage the follow-ups, and claim-related data maintenance.
Research revealed that around 50% of the task is possible automatically through RPA.
Some of the tool selection factors for the healthcare provider industry are usability, security (since the security of patient information is essential), data capture, scalability, and reliability.
Graph depicting the Annual Growth Rate of RPA in the healthcare industry
Use cases of RPA
Medical billing: Many hospitals need to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders. The main process should be a combination of all these processes. We can collaborate on various tests, medicines, food, and doctors for simplified payment. Companies that implemented automation before COVID -19 are experiencing fewer problems with keeping workflow and maintaining productivity.
Integrate the existing application extracts the data and makes the bulk payment and reconciliation of data & reimbursements. The process of claiming is quickly possible from different departments like administration, clinics, labs, scanning, consultation, food, and nursing charges areas.
Digitized billing ensures error-free outputs, the prevention of human errors, and speedy account settlements.
Claim management: In the scenario, we receive the claims via email, BOT can download the attachment in the claim and can extract data from the claim to the system, validate, and can-do further processing. Manually handling this process may take a long time and may cause errors during the process.
We will develop a digital workforce that will work hand in hand with the employees to achieve greater efficiency. We can make the robots understand the rule that is making the patient an ideal candidate to claim.
Validations of the claims is simple. Moreover, eligibility checks and entitlement checks is also possible.
Medicaid for newborns and new patient registration: Making the validation and adding/editing of the newborn’s insurance ID can be done by using the automated system. Moreover, in the case of existing patients, RPA is useful to check and update patient details, location details, and capture account-related medical history.
Appointment scheduling and rescheduling: Linked with the patient’s records, appointment scheduling is a time-consuming task that includes ensuring doctors’ availability, which can be leveraged by scanning the incoming data, segregating the medical history of the patients and appointments can be scheduled accordingly without meeting the staff and reducing the waiting time of the patients.
Moreover, sending timely reminders about the consultation and medical tests to the patients makes them feel more valued.
As a part of post-treatment care, RPA is useful to make follow-ups and send reminders to patients about the actions such as medication, and meal plans as a part of post-treatment care.
Tracking assets: Various assets will be required in the healthcare companies such as ventilators, syringes, and medical pumps.
Tracking of these assets is possible easily in a timely manner using RPA. Track down the shortages of the medicines in the pharmacy timely and inform to the concerned authority, if required automatic process before the stocks run out.
Used in surgery: Robotic surgery can be used to treat chronic conditions such as heart and pulmonary. The advantages in the case of laparoscopic surgery are precise 3d vision and easier instrument manipulation.
Records maintenance: The healthcare sector relies on paper-based records. So, digitizing these documents will help in saving the documents electronically and is useful to improve patient care. Recording the discharge details, long-time discharge procedures that involve post-treatment care and billing is easily possible by RPA. Using advanced technologies like NLP, OCR, and other data labeling processes, RPA is useful to prepare the documents.
Pandemic scenario handling: In scenarios like busy days or pandemics and contagious diseases like covid -19 Chatbot will help in saving patients time by interacting with them and providing the appropriate solution to their problems without interacting with the patients directly and hence reducing the risk of direct interaction with the patient and by reducing their waiting time.
Workflow management: Since the healthcare industry is a dynamic sector, good handling and coordination is required in this sector. It has a large workforce RPA, which is useful to eliminate the inefficiency in managing the workflows.
Workflow management includes coordinating patient healthcare, monitoring, staff scheduling, and management of day-to-day operations like case management, discharge planning, and claims processing.
Benefits of RPA
- Cost savings: large amounts of data can be processed using RPA without human intervention hence labour charges can be reduced. Surveys show that around 20-60% of FTE reduction is possible. Revenue cycle management will be easily done. Moreover, reduces healthcare administrative costs by automating repetitive manual tasks that are time-consuming.
- Improved efficiency: BOTs can run 24 x 7 ensuring the quality of the work and also at a much faster pace at the same time ensuring the accuracy of the data and reporting in the clinical settings.
- Improved ROI: We can observe the immediate ROI (money that you get back in investing in digital marketing strategies) and help to reduce other recurring costs.
- Better patient support: Ensuring better patient support by improving the patient-facing operations and providing better care for the patient’s individual needs.
Conclusion
RPA will aid the healthcare industry to reduce the time in mundane tasks and improve efficiency. So, in short, we can say that bringing RPA to the limelight in the healthcare industry will create lots of opportunities, and employment for people in the IT industries to manage the software programs and also will help the end users’ jobs easier and more efficiently.
