Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Saves Healthcare Providers Time and Money by Reducing Repetitive Administrative Tasks

How many routine tasks do you and your staff perform every day, every week, or every month? Think about compiling reports, manually entering data, and moving data from one database to another.

Although widely used in other industries, healthcare lags behind in the adoption of robotic process automation (RPA), which can emulate repetitive human actions to streamline workflows and increase efficiencies across any hospital department, resulting in significant ROI and resource savings.

According to a recent global study the average employee spends 60 hours a month on tasks that can easily be automated. More than eight in 10 respondents said they would be attracted to companies that invested in automation to reduce repetitive digital administration tasks. Another study showed that 70% of workers believe the biggest opportunity of automation comes from time wasted on repetitive work. 

What many in our industry may not know is that Consensus Cloud Solutions now offers RPA solutions for the healthcare industry. Our Consensus SST solution is the most versatile healthcare RPA platform available, powerful enough to tackle your toughest automation challenges but easy enough for junior analysts to understand and use. Many vendors charge outrageous fees per integration point and only provide solutions after months of waiting. We take pride in offering SST, a simplified, cost-effective, and reliable solution for any of your complex process automation needs.

Here are four examples of how our clients are using Consensus SST in their organizations:

• Surgery Partners saves $150,000 annually by letting SST handle repetitive and error-prone manual data entry, freeing staff to take on more challenging and professionally satisfying assignments.
• Halifax Health experienced an immediate return on investment with SST, saving 37 hours a day on manual tasks formerly handled by staff, resulting in annual salary savings of nearly $200,000, not counting efficiency gains.
• St. Claire Health improved productivity and significantly increased billed accounts with SST, measuring success through time and money saved, data reliability, software usability, and efficiency.
• Lincoln Surgical achieved ROI in three months, saving $100,000 a year through time savings, fewer material costs, and the efficiencies derived from work replacement that would have previously been handled manually by 1.5 FTEs.

RPA Excels in a Provider Setting

RPA can easily perform rules-based repetitive tasks such as standard report running and data entry. It can also successfully digitize tasks that are prone to human error through manual entry. In a clinical setting, think of how much time can be saved scanning documents, auditing patient records access, and processing patient admission and discharge records.

In the billing and finance departments, RPA can help with processing insurance claims, electronic payment processes, tax-related tasks, creating new general ledger codes, and bad debt write-offs. For HR, RPA can be used to automate tasks like payroll updates, new hire procedures, employee exit procedures, benefits processing, and credentialing.

RPA can be used in healthcare information technology departments for domain updates, systems tests, systems conversions, and systems migrations. It also can be deployed to connect disparate systems, an all-too-common occurrence in hospitals. RPA-scripted interfaces are ideal for situations where HL7 interfaces are not an option or are too expensive. RPA interfaces can be used for batch, real-time, and interactive interfaces, and they can be deployed quickly to help with tight deadlines like an
EHR upgrade.

Benefits of Getting on the RPA Bandwagon

A question everyone wants to know when it comes to implementing a new technology is, “how will this impact my hospital’s bottom line?” The typical explanation is that ROI is measurable within one year of implementation, but ROI can occur much quicker, depending on the project. According to Deloitte, RPA implementations help providers meet compliance standards, enable higher quality/accuracy, improve productivity, and reduce costs. More than three-quarters of companies (78%) said they expect to significantly increase their investment in RPA over the next three years. Those are some pretty encouraging stats, if you ask us!

Hospitals that employ RPA can enjoy:

1. Improved efficiencies, through scaling repetitive tasks that lead to increased productivity and time and cost savings. Once a workflow is established, it can be cloned and tweaked to streamline another process in the same department or a similar one in another business area.
2. Improved quality, by reducing the risk of errors inherent in manual processes, thus promoting accuracy and efficiency.
3. Reduced waste, not only on labor costs but also on time and material costs.
4. Labor savings, by completing tasks in a fraction of the time it would take a human. Automation works 24/7/365 without breaks or vacations, while leaving employees free to perform core, value-added tasks.

Where Can SST Improve Operations at Your Organization?

Hospitals want providers working toward the top of their licenses, leaving administrative tasks for support staff. Likewise, you want your employees adding value to the enterprise, not performing mindless tasks that can be better handled by automation.

When it comes to repetitive tasks, robotic process automation outperforms human workers in every area. Robots don’t take breaks, vacations, or call in sick. They work at all hours and don’t ask for salary increases. Companies that deploy automation often do not decrease staff. Rather, they use existing workers to innovate and provide better care and support to patients.

To consider whether your organization is ready for automation, check out this simple assessment:

• Do you manage a high volume of rules-based and repetitive tasks?
• Do you run standard reports daily, weekly, hourly, monthly?
• Are there tasks that consume many hours of manual labor?
• Do you have data entry tasks where data is available in a file?
• Are there certain repetitive tasks prone to human errors, taking up too many hours in the day?
• Could your staff be more valuable to your organization if they could spend more time on their core objectives?
• Are your employees burdened by managing a workload beyond their scheduled hours, as well as extra administrative tasks?

Once considered solely an IT tool, RPA is useful throughout hospitals, health systems, surgery centers, practice groups, and more to support a multitude of departments and job functions.

Learn more about our SST product – the standard for robotic process automation in healthcare – so you can begin to improve processes and automate workflows across the continuum of care. Visit https://www.consensus.com/sst/