How RPA is Changing the Healthcare World

Once again, a catastrophe, in the form of COVID-19 signified the importance of effective health care services. It has ignited a new debate surrounding healthcare and shifted global focus towards it. This pandemic also taught us that just having the right infrastructure, doctors, equipment, and staff do not help in all circumstances. But having these things along with the right technology in place can prove a game-changer.

Experts believe that the utilization of advanced technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) can bring greater efficiency to the healthcare system. Right from improving patient experience to simplified clinical processes, RPA is seen as a promising technology to increase operating performance in many ways.

This blog will help you understand this aspect in detail.

In the healthcare sector, doctors often need executives to manage patient appointments. Sometimes, in the absence of executive(s), doctors themselves need to put extra effort to handle incoming requests. You can ease this work by automating it. RPA bots enable doctors or healthcare providers to handle any number of requests at any given point in time. RPA service helps in managing appointment scheduling, appointment updation or cancellation (if needed) quite efficiently with zero or minimal human intervention. RPA application allows patients to book appointments as per various available slots and notifies patients (via email/ SMS) about confirmed schedules.

Healthcare sector is overloaded with tasks that are highly repetitive in nature like data entry, data processing, managing documents, inventory & supply chain management, etc. When such work comes in high volume, it consumes a lot of resources and puts a financial strain on healthcare providers. Using RPA technology, you can reduce overhead expenses and cut human-labor costs. According to Forbes, implementation of RPA in healthcare results in reducing operating costs by 50%.

Healthcare industry often needs to come up with innovative health plans that can strike a right chord amongst targeted people. It requires a lot of data processing and analysis to derive something unique. Further, manual processing is prone to inaccuracies that affect the final outcomes. By implementing RPA in healthcare, you can analyze past stored data and find meaningful insights about various things like:

• Which treatment is high in demand?
• Patient registrations in a particular time period.
• Resource utilization.
• Patient feedback and much more.

Based on insights, you can prepare more standardized, competitive, and patient-friendly healthcare plans.

We all have seen how the healthcare system almost collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Alarming shortages of hospital beds, ventilators, defibrillators, and various kinds of medical pumps created panic amongst citizens. People were running from one hospital to another to find beds and ventilators.

There was no centralized system where one could get details of scarce life-saving assets. Using business process automation in healthcare, however, you can tackle such challenges. RPA application using sensors allows you to track and report available assets with a single click. It saves precious time, allows healthcare providers to move critical patients to the right location, and results in effective utilization of resources.

Healthcare professionals need to access patients’ data to execute their day-to-day distinct operations. Whether it is a doctor, lab technician, IT person, or an administrative executive, all need to deal with patient data but require varying degrees of access control. You can’t share confidential medical reports with clerical staff. It breaches patients’ privacy.

RPA in healthcare assists you in better managing data access control. You can define, which data is accessible to whom? Automation also provides a robust shield to protect valuable data from any cyber threat using advanced encryption. It enables healthcare systems to

• Reduce detection & response time
• Classify potential risks
• Prevent data loss or theft
• Send auto alert to handle any exceptions

Medical service does not stop at a point when a patient gets discharged from the hospital. In fact, many important things start after this juncture for which robotic process automation (RPA) in healthcare can prove beneficial. Through RPA application patients can receive diet plans on a weekly basis, prescriptions to be followed, physiotherapy instructions, etc. Timely reminders about such things along with updates regarding upcoming appointments, diagnostic tests, lab reports, and much more can improve patient experience and ensure more positive healthcare outcomes.

There has been a noticeable increase in the use of robots for surgical procedures in recent times. Thanks to its minimally invasive approach and positive benefits to patients. This you can understand better by knowing its characteristics.

Robots provide surgeons with 10X magnified and high-quality images of the body’s intricate anatomy. Through a console, surgeons can manage surgical instruments that are smaller and more flexible than human hands. Robots precisely mimic surgeons’ hand movements while minimizing hand tremors. It brings efficiency in multiple ways.

• Less tissue damage
• Minimal blood loss
• Less pain
• Faster recovery
• Reduced risk of infection
• Less visible scars

Robotic surgeries are usually used in these areas of medical science

• Cardiology
• Orthopedics
• Urology
• Gynecology
• Pediatrics
• Gastroenterology

RPA bots do not just execute rule-based work but also process multiple documents simultaneously and check policy validations easily. After proper validation, RPA software sends notifications to concerned authorities for approvals. It connects various legacy systems (like HIM, EMR, ERP, Helpdesk, and web-based portals) to pacify the insurance claim process.

Hospitals need to maintain a record of patient’s expenses that include doctor’s fees, room charges, ICU charges, nursing charges, medicine, and medical gear costs, food costs, etc. At the time of discharge, administrative executives need to find, verify, and calculate the total sum of all bills, and take necessary approvals to relieve a patient on time. All this requires herculean efforts and consumes enough bandwidth of resources. Inefficiency at this stage sometimes results in exit delays.

Through RPA, you can automate account settlement tasks in a very quick time and reduce a significant amount of burden from employees. RPA software can even be programmed to send auto-notifications to patients about bill amount, payment status (pending/cleared), and also for sending final receipts.

Embracing digitalization can give you a competitive edge in the growing healthcare space. By implementing RPA in healthcare, you can bring improved efficiency at reduced cost. That too while elevating patient experience by a significant proportion. Its implementation proves beneficial for both healthcare service providers and patients.