With so much talk about an upcoming recession, it’s important for healthcare organizations to keep a close eye on cost, often delaying some projects to see how financial areas stabilize. Yet, embracing automation during difficult times can actually allow your organization to do more with less, and become more resilient than ever. Let’s take a look at how automation technology can help.
Automation is a Digital Worker
Automation doesn’t need to be hired, onboarded, promoted, or fired. It requires no sick days and costs substantially less for the amount of work being performed than the cost of a benefit and salary package for additional employees. In addition, automation allows healthcare workers to focus on clinically relevant tasks rather than administrative ones that often take more time and fall outside an area of expertise. Because automation increases the efficiency and productivity of the human workforce, it is referred to as “recession proof.” With a resilient, scalable approach, automation helps weather the storms, by removing redundancies and delivering a consistent approach to process improvement and operational stability.
Automation Reduces Cost
Automation allows healthcare organizations to accomplish more within timeframes, reducing stress and burnout. Increased efficiency means less need for overtime, sick days, and time off. This allows staff to focus on patient care while automation works in the background. Bottlenecks often cause data delays in clinical workflow and treatment plans, many times resulting in duplications of time and effort. Automation can comb through vast amounts of data in electronic health records (EHR), to identify issues and enable every user on any device to be connected, making information at the point of care easier and faster.
Automation Adjusts to Need
As we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, automation stepped in to adjust to the needs of healthcare facilities in physician offices, labs, telehealth, patient outreach, and with population health goals like the vaccine rollout. It connected lab orders to rapid response teams and cut through the chaos to file HRSA claims within time constraints. This characteristic of automation could also improve seasonal wait times in healthcare facilities. By evaluating historical data from numerous sources, organizations can better estimate when they may need to ramp up again for the next flu season, or the next emergency. Automation updates information in reports effortlessly and quickly, without a human burden.
Automation Powers Revenue Cycle Tasks
With as many as 18 different portals for insurance verification, it’s easy to see how human teams can become overwhelmed. A 2021 healthcare research study showed that 59% of health systems use RPA for eligibility verification, making this one of the most common processes CFOs are automating. And it doesn’t stop there. 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 two working days a week. Automation is used in every area of the revenue cycle, from invoice processing to claims status checks, denial management, and collections. The average ROI from an automation project is over 300% in the first year, making this the perfect digital worker for revenue cycle teams.
Automation Allows You To Hire Experts
Automation means less overtime, improved efficiency, and fewer errors. Because the need to hire entry-level workers for manual tasks is reduced, there’s more budget to hire resources, innovators, and leaders, focusing on people who add value to the team, rather than merely plugging holes. Boston WorkStation is the preferred automation partner for hundreds of hospitals, healthcare organizations, and technology partner solutions. The difference lies in our flexible approach, fixed pricing, adaptable business model, and 5-star customer support. Give us a call. We’ve been providing healthcare-centric automation solutions for over 30 years. We look forward to speaking with you.