How to Automate Healthcare?
In healthcare organizations, efficient workflows necessitate the use of automation to streamline tasks like appointment scheduling, updating medical records, producing reports, and more. The healthcare sector reaps numerous benefits from automation technology. Including increased provider productivity, improved patient outcomes, and lower patient costs. The five possible automated healthcare workflows are as follows:
- Scheduling and Managing Appointments
- Insurance Pre-Authorization
- Medical Coding & Billing
- Insurance Claim Processing
- Revenue Cycle Management
The Requirement for Healthcare Digitization
Even though different infection rates are decreasing, winter eventually returns, which will raise new concerns within the healthcare industry regarding its prevention. However, in addition to diseases and infection rates, medical organizations must address data errors, missed appointments, excessive paperwork, and other minor complications that impact patient care quality.
Digital healthcare solutions and services have seen a significant uptick in demand over the past year (for instance, the demand for healthcare automation has increased by a factor of 30 in a few nations). In the meantime, the excessive pressure on the medical industry caused a 35% increase in the number of resignations among healthcare workers.
In this blog we will get into more detail about document automation in the healthcare industry, the reason why it will be so important in 2023, and how workflow automation will help your medical practice.
So, what is wrong with hospital workflow procedures that rely on paper?
While contrasting a dated methodology with a cutting-edge arrangement, paper-based work processes end up being wasteful, inefficient, and inclined to mistakes.
Healthcare Automation Statistics for Previous Year
Here we portray statistics that show why healthcare workflow management solutions are necessary:
Medical errors cost more than $20 billion annually and claimed the lives of more than 100,000 patients. A company’s reputation can be ruined by unsigned documents, missed appointments, and mixed-up test examinations.
Errors got worst during the recent pandemic because 44% of healthcare workers did not know how to use Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems because they did not get enough training on how to use technology at work.
At the start of the pandemic, 50% of physicians were experiencing burnout, primarily as a result of the overwhelming amount of non-clinical responsibilities (such as reporting, billing, claiming, document management, etc.). The prevalence of burnout and stress among medical professionals increased by 13% and almost 11% respectively during the recent pandemic.
32% of healthcare workers used to spend more than 20 hours a week on administrative tasks before the pandemic. Physicians claim that 38% of paper-based administrative work is unnecessary as a result of the exponential growth in the number of patients and documents to be processed since the start of 2020.
Analyzation of healthcare states that by 2025, about half of the current activities in healthcare will be completely automated, and the vast majority of them will be paper-based processes.
So, how can healthcare organizations enhance workflow? Hospitals face numerous challenges when seeking an appropriate solution. Patient care, regulatory compliance, and streamlined workflows are the foundations of efficiency in the healthcare sector.
There are still questions regarding whether automation can meet all these requirements and improve hospital workflow processes rather than hinder them and waste resources.
Benefits of Implementing Automated Workflow in Healthcare Organizations
Improved Patient Experience
It can be frustrating to wait for hours, days, or even weeks for your appointment with your doctor. Patient satisfaction is also influenced by how easy or difficult it is to schedule an appointment, in addition to the speed with which appointments are scheduled.
Patients and healthcare professionals benefit from automating medical workflow because:
To make patients feel more at eased and cared for, automatic document processing frees up administrative time for in-person communication with them.
Document workflows are simplified by automation in the healthcare industry, which significantly shortens patient wait times.
Improved Healthcare Establishment Productivity
Clerical, repetitive tasks are intrinsically linked to the daily routine of every healthcare establishment, resulting in increased productivity. This is one of the main reasons why healthcare workers are getting tired and low employee morale is rising at a rate of 52% per year. Fortunately, most of these tasks do not require human intervention.
It only takes a few minutes to set up automated hospital workflow processes with a dependable automation solution to:
- Collect patient data (such as intake forms for patients, medical history documents, hospital discharge documents, etc.)
- Securely use legally binding E-signature to sign sensitive medical documentation.
- Sort and store the collected documents so they can be accessed quickly and easily.
- Transfer data between administrative documents, such as spreadsheets and patient forms.
Security and Confidentiality of Data
Paper documents lack a guarantee of security unless they are securely locked. According to a study conducted by Stanford University, employee errors account for 88% of data breaches.
Document access permissions can be easily set up with a dependable healthcare workflow automation solution to allow or deny users access to certain documents for editing or even viewing. Administrators of certain healthcare automation solutions are also able to assign roles that grant specific access permissions, not just to a specific workflow but to an entire organization. To guarantee a sufficient level of patient data security, a dependable software solution for healthcare automation should be HIPAA compliant.
Analytics of the Entire Workflow
Paper-based healthcare workflows make it nearly impossible to monitor the editing history of documents. It is unlikely that you will be able to track who opened a document and viewed its contents even with digital documents if they are sent the traditional way, such as via email. Analytics tools are included in workflow automation software that addresses these issues.
Tracking for instance is made possible by a healthcare automation solution:
Who opened a document, when, and how many times? Who modified a document (with detailed information about these modifications)? Which automatic actions (such as data transfers and document archiving) were performed? Were carried out, and which were unsuccessful. Just a few examples.
Reduce the Chance of Errors
According to statistics, administrative errors account for approximately 86% of all errors in medical facilities, with manual healthcare workflow management accounting for the majority of these errors.
Even the smallest error can result in death in the healthcare industry. A medical record can have unintended and sometimes tragic consequences for even the tiniest error. This kind of error can be avoided with automation software.
What exactly is Healthcare Administration?
Management of healthcare workflows within a medical facility is at the heart of administration in the same way that it is at the heart of any other sector.
The demand for healthcare administration workers is expected to rise by 18% by 2028, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Management is one of the most important duties that medical administration must perform.
Electronic Health Record (HER) systems are now readily available to assist medical administrative workers in managing all of the aforementioned responsibilities, including patient documentation, surgical equipment, inventory, performance reports, and expenditures from the budget. Treatment protocols, implementation of rules and policies, and HR processes all require communication.
An electronic version of a patient’s record known as an EHR (Electronic Health Record) ensures the safety of medical data and gives authorized users instant access.
Software for Electronic Health Records enables healthcare providers to create, effectively manage, and share patient medical data with authorized parties (such as other healthcare providers).
The following are the components of an EHR:
- Physicians
- Hospitals
- Radiology Reports
- Vital Signs
- Laboratory Data
- Insurers
Even though the first Electronic Health Record (EHR) system was developed in the 1960s, it was not until the beginning of the 21st century that they saw significant demand and growth in the global healthcare industry.
Electronic Health Record software has become a necessity for any medical establishment to maintain a competitive level of patient service because of the rapid development of Information Technology (IT).
By automating routine, repetitive tasks, healthcare administration automation means freeing up medical professionals’ time for more valuable and important activities. Since document workflow automation is the primary “black hole” that consumes the majority of healthcare administration time.
How are Workflow Processes in Hospitals that are Automated Changing the Healthcare Industry?
Workflows in healthcare include things like blood donor registration forms and infection control plans. To illustrate the practical applications of automation in healthcare, we have chosen patient intake, the most common medical workflow.
Typically, a person’s first impression of a healthcare facility is formed during the patient registration process. This is why it is so important to complete this workflow as quickly and smoothly as possible.
A fully automated Patient Intake workflow can be set up in just a few minutes using the Armstrong Healthcare workflow automation solution.
- Documents
You can either import any documents you require for this healthcare workflow from your device or cloud storage or create new documents from scratch.
Editing web forms and other documents to make them clear and understandable for patients and healthcare professionals is made simple by the user-friendly interface.
- Workflow Visualization
The drag-and-drop facility that lets users create a visual representation of their healthcare process is one of Armstrong Healthcare’s most useful features. You can add as many steps as you need and give each one access to documents. Doing so permits you to perceive how the reports are directed between the medical services’ work process members.
- Automation of Workflow (Bots)
The drag-and-drop tactic lets you set up automatic document routing. However, Armstrong Healthcare Bots can assist you in automating other routines, and repetitive tasks that do not require human intervention.
Automate the transfer of data, the making of updates, the saving of changes, and so on by transferring notifications and reminders and automating integration with external services (such as CRM systems and Cloud storage service), with no-code Bots that are easy to use.
Book a demo and learn how to set up automation for your day-to-day entire document workflows using an all-in-one and no-code platform.
For more information, please visit our website: https://www.ashs.us/ Or mail us at – info@ashs.us
