Digital transformation refers to improvements in a “digital era.” Healthcare has seen significant strides from digital transformation efforts during the past year. Projects have included a diverse range of solutions, from hosting IT services in the cloud, to creating touchless encounters like telehealth, reducing manual tasks, and improving connectivity across disparate systems. COVID-19 increased the speed of digital transformation, and healthcare leaders are now tasked with improving these initial engagements. Agility and the ability to scale will define the new operating model moving forward in 2021.
What is a Digital Transformation Plan?
A digital transformation plan can take many shapes, but when you boil it down, it’s about placement, people, performance, and productivity. A digital transformation plan can be as simple as meeting user expectations, or as in-depth as implementing a new business model. Because each organization sees digital transformation through their own unique lens, it’s important to develop strategies that are easy to onboard, and can show a positive outcome, allowing everyone to make the shift in behaviors more easily.
The main reasons most healthcare organizations are including Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as a critical aspect of their digital transformation strategy is to increase the efficiency of internal processes, improve core business functions, ensure accuracy, integrate applications, and reduce overall costs.
Here are a few ways RPA can help:
Leverage Automation Technology To Complete Tasks More Efficiently
Gartner predicts double-digit growth in RPA through 2024. “The key driver for RPA projects is their ability to improve process quality, speed, and productivity, each of which is increasingly important as organizations try to meet the demands of cost reduction during COVID-19.” Automation allows you to #bridgethegaps between applications and processes, solving problems where legacy or proprietary systems lack integrations.
Cut Complexities In Revenue Cycle
RPA speeds up manual data entry processes, claims status checks, payment processing, and follow-up. By adding RPA to the revenue cycle, many of the manual tedious tasks can be automated. This drives down costs for front and back office services, and allows people to focus on higher priority tasks, like relationships with payers, denial management, and customer service.
Connect Disparate Data Silos In Telehealth
One of the challenges with a manual process is integrating data from external systems back to an internal system. This creates a lot of roadblocks. Telescope Health needed 5 FTEs, working on three shifts, to manually enter patients in their internal system. After implementing automation, this process requires only one floating FTE. Every order entered is complete and the communication process loop is closed. “85% of our data entry process is being done by automation and our overall error rate for integration has dropped by 70%.”
Improve Vaccine Distribution
Having a digital workforce streamlines the vaccination distribution process by uncovering patient groups, verifying, registering, and scheduling appointments, reporting lot numbers of vaccines registered, and queueing up second dose follow-ups. RPA can even create an encounter for the second dose at a specified date and time. Hours of manual data manipulation, copy/paste/input are eliminated, freeing up human staff for other registration and scheduling functions. An RPA automation can run 24/7, with faster speed, greater accuracy, and no interference with daily workflows.
Why Boston Software Systems?
Digital transformation consists of modern tools and processes leveraged to solve business problems. The priorities are different for each organization. Let’s discuss the current state of your digital “health” and see where a successful transformation might be able to help. Let’s chat for 30 minutes to give you a better perspective of opportunities and costs.