RPA In Healthcare - The Future of Healthcare Automation Explained

RPA in healthcare is all the rage; from individual practitioners to clinics, people are
betting on telemedicine and RPA solutions as a permanent solution to the current
COVID-19 situation. Novel Coronavirus has disrupted how the world works, and
the healthcare industry is among the worst-hit sectors due to the pandemic.

Not only do healthcare providers have to tackle the upsurge of rising cases, but
they also tend to the needs of patients already suffering from chronic illnesses.
While we’re talking about healthcare and how RPA is disrupting this industry, let’s
outline the sections we’d cover in this blog:
2
● The current state of Healthcare systems 3
● What is Robotic Process Automation? 4
● RPA Benefits for Healthcare 5
● RPA in Healthcare: Use-Cases 8
● Closing Words 11
So, let’s move forward & unravel the use cases of RPA in healthcare and see if it’s
worth the hype.

The current state of Healthcare systems

Coronavirus didn’t create new problems in Healthcare. It exposed the broken

system. Healthcare practitioners are proactively working to treat people with flu-
like symptoms while ensuring that patients with chronic illnesses are cared for,
and others are marked safe during the crisis.
With problems such as physician burnout, this healthcare system isn’t last very
long!
According to a WHO report, there’s a global shortage of doctors, with 2.5
healthcare practitioners to 1000 patients in the United States.
If we factor in all the non-coronavirus patients, the shortage might bring up more
significant problems than the pandemic.
With limited doctors, offering high-quality medical services to a population with
diverse medical needs poses several operational and organisational challenges.
Robotic Process Automation aims to solve just that (and more!).

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Before we shed some light on RPA benefits and use cases for the healthcare sector,
let’s briefly understand what Robotic Process Automation is.

In the words of UiPath (the leading vendor for RPA tools), ‘Robotic Process
Automation is the technology that allows anyone today to configure computer
software or a “robot” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting
within digital systems to execute a business process.’
RPA Benefits for Healthcare

A 2019 McKinsey Report highlights Robotic Process Automation as an emerging

automation technology that’d utterly revamp the current healthcare system. The
same report speculates that timely RPA implementation would increase the annual
revenue(to-be) between $350Bn to $410Bn by 2025.

However, the cost-reduction benefit of RPA implementation should be a good

enough reason for the Healthcare sector to invest and implement business process
automation.
Let’s briefly outline the benefits of Robotic Process Automation in Healthcare, for
that would provide you with a practice-oriented idea about the deployment and
application of RPA in Healthcare:

● Increased Appointment Turnover

Healthcare providers suffer financially because most patients either don’t show up
or cancel the appointment at the very last minute.
Effective RPA Implementation with a decent telemedicine solution would help
doctors send appointment reminders to patients and even ask for follow-ups-
increasing appointment turnover, productivity, and efficiency.

● Effective Patient Scheduling

RPA intelligent bots (short for ‘robots’) help streamline online appointments.
But, How?
RPA bots identify and record crucial factors received in an appointment request,
including location, physician, claim carrier, time, and date. These bots then log
these factors in a report and send it to the representative/system assigned to
confirm the appointments.

● Enhanced Patient Experience

A positive patient experience is crucial for the growth and well-being of the
patient.
Effective RPA implementation in Healthcare helps medical providers automate
time-consuming and repetitive tasks, with additional benefits like data digitization
and patient tracking. These factors ultimately benefit the patient and enhance the
value-based care experience.

● Streamlined Workflow
Healthcare providers and patients alike share several critical aspects. These tasks
include population wellness, case utilisation management, and remote monitoring.
The common theme among these tasks is that they all involve time-consuming
and repetitive processes- a prime area for Robotic Process Automation.
 ● Increased Employee Satisfaction
RPA bots allow healthcare workers to focus on high-priority tasks by eliminating
and automating mundane, tedious, and repetitive tasks.
Since high-priority tasks ask for creative inputs and add to authority-
implementing RPA often results in increased employee satisfaction.

The higher the employee satisfaction, the higher the company’s ROI. The benefits
of RPA exceed the said examples, for they’re subjective to different businesses.

To learn more, check out this blog: ‘5 Amazing Examples of Robotic Process
Automation in the Real World’.

RPA in Healthcare: Use-Cases

RPA will transform the healthcare sector- but for the better!
The Healthcare industry is complex, with interconnected procedures, repetitive
tasks, and multiple players across the value chain.
A McKinsey Digital report predicts healthcare to have 36% of automation
potential. Robotic Process Automation in Healthcare presents great potential for
improving operational and organizational processes. But its application isn’t
limited to the healthcare sector. A McKinsey Digital report predicts healthcare to
have 36% of automation potential.

Here we have curated a list of the top few use cases of RPA in the healthcare
industry, which is undoubtedly going to bring in some disruptive changes:

● Speedy Claim Management

Claim management is crucial to the proper functioning of Healthcare institutions.

Here’s a data point to make our case:
According to the United States Census Bureau, over 90% or almost 294 million
people in America are insured. The entire process of setting these claims will have
clerical errors that could result in financial pitfalls.
RPA bots can be programmed to identify compliance and non-compliance-related
exceptions and regulations, streamlining the entire process of managing insurance
claims.

● Workflow Management

Everyday operations of any healthcare institution involve many mundane yet

crucial tasks, including case management, discharge, creating and allocating
prescriptions, patient admission, claim processing, release, and more.
Why automate everyday business processes?
Medical practitioners, including doctors and nurses, can shift and focus their
attention on the patients- something that’s imperative considering the current
nCOV Coronavirus Crisis.

● Patient Remote Monitoring

RPA in healthcare offers many benefits, including higher accuracy, and faster
processes. These benefits improve patient record management. And assist
healthcare providers in creating a standardised prognosis plan toward desired
patients’ health objectives.

● Improved Care Cycle

This is an extension of the previous point. Continuous remote monitoring with

Robotic Process Automation generates data that can be levied for an accurate
diagnosis. And can further help in creating the best prognosis and individual care
cycles.
RPA bots are capable of maintaining and managing all crucial yet mundane tasks.
This creates more time for healthcare professionals to attend and deliver better
medical solutions to their patients.

● Regulatory Compliance

RPA bots ensure that everything they do, trigger, track, trace, or document is
logged and systematically stored in well-structured logs. Any report during a
healthcare audit is even necessary for regulatory compliance.
Send these logs to the concerned parties, and ensure your practice’s accountability.
This event prepares healthcare enterprises to deal with and handle unprepared
and sudden external audits (if any).

● Simplified Appointments

Scheduling and seeing through a complete appointment often includes several

complicated (and often implied processes).
For instance, here are the general steps that healthcare practitioners need to follow
to schedule a medical appointment:
● Collect Patients’ Basic Information
● Ask for medical history
● Check for a valid insurance policy number
● Align patients’ meetings with the Doctor(s) on-board schedule
● Inform patients/doctors of any changes
An RPA Bot can carry out the said processes quicker and more efficiently, cutting
operational costs and promoting efficiency.
Closing Words

Implementing new technology does pose potential obstacles, but the benefits far
exceed the associated challenges. RPA in healthcare is a win-win situation, for it
streamlines the workflow at the doctors’ end while offering superior care to the
patients.
RPA is revolutionising the healthcare sector, thanks to innumerable benefits such
as cost-saving and reduced errors. Consequently, the RPA benefits can be
witnessed in all the major industries- manufacturing, retail, data entry,
telecommunications, and BFSI.
The RPA digital workforce offers potential benefits to the healthcare sector while
supporting the shift to remote work and abetting the WFM (Work From home) as
a permanent solution to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Having delivered hundreds of RPA services, rest assured that Signity is amongst
the top RPA solution providers.