Healthcare organizations are stretched to the limit from illness, stress, burnout, and staffing shortages. The current situation is impeding our ability to provide quality care, by increasing long hours amidst continued staffing shortages. COVID-19 is not over, and as hospitals and health systems scramble to take care of increasing workloads with less people, burnout, anxiety, and depression numbers are skyrocketing. How can Robotic Process Automation (RPA) reduce the pain points and help drive efficiencies in 2023?
Automate Prior Authorizations
Prior authorization, or prior approval, is a health plan cost-control process by which physicians and other healthcare providers must obtain advance approval before a specific service can be obtained. Everything from medications to treatment plans, surgeries or durable medical equipment (DME), requires prior approval. The process can take anywhere from one day to one month. This is a largely manual process, and when time is converted to dollars, the staggering cost for providers is between $23-$31 billion each year. According to a 2021 CAQH report, providers could save 16+ minutes per authorization with an automated process, which takes a little less than a minute. That’s a savings of up to two working days, or 16 hours a week. Not only can the task move faster, automation eliminates up to 98% of errors, which improves denial rates.
Power Human Resource Management
With healthcare staffing at a tipping point, the accompanying paperwork required to process new employees is mind-numbing. Whether you are sending employee emails, onboarding staff, credentialing physicians, or setting up change management processes, automating the tasks can remove hours or days of interactions and allow employees to eliminate duplicate documentation and errors. There are many tasks that can be automated in the Human Resources (HR) department including internal employee recruitment letters, offer letters, standardized forms, salary information and changes, payroll, promotions, ongoing training, and password management tasks. The typical onboarding process routes and re-routes paperwork back to the new hire to fix errors, then sends to stakeholders and leadership for signatures and follow-up. It’s a repeating cycle, made easier by automation. Automating HR tasks keeps the process moving faster, without errors, and ensures compliance and completion.
Perform Claims Status Checks
A healthcare claim status inquiry is a communication between a provider and a payer about a healthcare claim. When a provider contacts a payer to check a claim status, it takes an average of 14 minutes and costs the provider $7.12. By the time a claim reaches a denied status, the provider has lost at least two weeks. Considering that the time between claims submission and payment can be as long as four weeks, these delays are costly. Add to that repeated checks, and it’s easy to see how this cost can rise. This is a largely manual process in many healthcare organizations, and making sure claims were received by the payers is a perfect area for automation tools. Automation allows healthcare organizations to quickly identify missing claims or information, eliminate timely filing denials, and increase “dollars in the door.” One client added 1,500 providers without adding one additional FTE – all due to automation in the claims status check process.
Manage Supply Chain and Materials Management Processes
2020 brought with it many new challenges in the healthcare supply chain that continue to plague healthcare organizations. PPE shortages, lack of visibility, stockpiling, and the need for additional testing and vaccination supplies. Supply chain automation refers to technology solutions to streamline supply chain processes without human attention, effort, or involvement. Automation can be used everywhere from inventory management and control to procurement, ordering, inventory, and payment protocols. Everything from surgical preference cards to products, shipping and transportation costs, and invoice processing. Automation ensures there are no errors in calculations, and can easily compare and contrast tier-based pricing, rebates, and other cost-saving measures, identifying and completing repetitive tasks that are both time-consuming and/or error-prone.
Why Boston Software Systems?
Boston Software Systems understands that people are driving the processes in caring for patients every day. Let’s have a conversation about your 2023 digital strategy. We won’t take up much of your time, and most solutions are deployed in under 30 days. We have helped healthcare drive operational efficiencies for over 35 years. We’ll help you achieve your goals in the coming year and have your cost estimate and Scope of Work completed in 5 days.