Smart Automation is Vital to Healthcare, But Choosing the Wrong Vendor Can Be Disastrous

If we’ve learned anything in the last three years, it’s that people are our most valuable resource. By harnessing the collective abilities and ideas of people, we made it through one of the most trying times of modern society. That’s why it’s important that we empower healthcare workers with smart automation solutions that help, rather than hinder their efforts, and make their workflows more intuitive, eliminating duplicate documentation, errors, and impediments to patient care.

The Top Ten Ways Smart Automation Projects Can Go Wrong

Smart automation projects can go wrong for various reasons, but here is a partial list of common pitfalls:

1. A Lack of Clear Objectives: Failing to define clear and achievable goals for the automation project can lead to disasters. Without a well-defined purpose, automation efforts may not provide meaningful results.

2. Poor Planning: Inadequate planning can result in unrealistic timelines, insufficient budgets, or inadequate resource allocation. This can lead to project delays, cost overruns, or suboptimal outcomes.

3. Inadequate Stakeholder Involvement: Not involving key stakeholders, including end-users, IT teams, and business leaders, in the project’s planning and execution can lead to misunderstandings, resistance to change, and project failure.

4. Insufficient Data Quality: How will you validate the results? Automation often relies on data. If the data used is inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated, automated processes can produce incorrect results or exacerbate existing issues rather than fixing them.

5. Overcomplexity: Trying to “boil the ocean” or automate overly complex processes without scaling, streamlining, or optimizing them first can lead to intricate, hard-to-maintain automation systems that don’t deliver on the expected benefits.

6. A Technology Mismatch: Selecting the wrong automation tools, technologies, or vendors can result in compatibility issues, integration challenges, or increased costs. Experience matters in choosing a technology vendor. Look for ones with years of experience in healthcare-specific projects. And don’t forget to check support reviews. Because after the ink is dry on the contract, everything boils down to support.

7. Inadequate Testing: Skipping or insufficiently conducting testing and validation of automated processes can lead to errors, disruptions, or security vulnerabilities.

8. Lack of Scalability: Failing to design automation solutions with scalability in mind can lead to problems when the workload increases or there is a shift in demand.

9. Security and Compliance Risks: Neglecting security and compliance considerations can expose the organization to data breaches, regulatory penalties, or legal liabilities.

10. Cost Overruns: Underestimating the total cost of ownership, including ongoing maintenance and support, can lead to budget overruns and financial strain. To mitigate these risks and increase the likelihood of successful smart automation projects, organizations should have a clear understanding of the current objectives as well as future costs.

How Boston WorkStation Helped Healthcare Recover

During the early days of the pandemic, health systems had to reinvent how they worked, going from physical offices to kitchen tables, with kids being homeschooled and resources limited. Automation stepped up as a great enabler of people, productivity, and business continuity. The Director of Patient Accounts at Northwestern Medicine said, “We had three days to transition everyone to a work-from-home (WFH) environment, with kids, pets, and the challenges of life. We had to relocate desks, computers, and people. While we focused on people, automation took care of everything else.” 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. Northwestern did not lose one day of productivity, thanks to Boston WorkStation, and the ability to keep claims status checks going during the transition. Automation offset the work of 25 FTEs, and while they grew in provider count (from 1,500 to 3,000), they did not need to add one additional team member.

One of our telehealth clients needed a way to keep up with increased demands. Because of the ramp up in mobile COVID testing protocols, their practice required 5 FTEs, working on three shifts, to manually input each patient’s demographics into their computerized lab order entry system (CPOE), as well as multiple lab systems. Boston WorkStation quickly automated this tedious project, resulting in the need for only 1 floating FTE. Every order was entered accurately and the communication loop was closed. This automation was quickly scaled to over 200 providers, across mobile testing sites throughout Northeast Florida. By automating the lab’s reporting capabilities, they were able to apply more time toward patient care. These are merely two examples in a long list of satisfied customers.

Why Boston Software Systems?

We state our truths and keep our promises. 90% of Boston WorkStation projects are developed and deployed in under 30 days. How strong is the ROI? One of our clients saved 180 hours per month and $20 million in failed claims re-submissions. Another recovered $2 million per year in ED billing, by automating auditing procedures, while a third saved 10 hours per day and $1.2 million per year by automating crossover claims processing. We have 30+ years of well-documented success in healthcare. We continue to work hard every day to maintain customer loyalty by going that extra mile. Don’t make a mistake you’ll regret later. Contact us to schedule a free assessment.

Smart Automation Returns Time To Patients And Reduces Clinical Burnout

Since the pandemic began over three years ago, clinicians have been stretched to the limit. Burnout is an ongoing issue that is never adequately addressed in hospitals and health systems. With mental health issues soaring, technology vendors have a responsibility to support healthcare providers and administrative staff who are overburdened by not only the volume of tasks but the duplication of time and effort.

Smart Automation Can Help Streamline Tasks

By streamlining administrative tasks like appointment scheduling, billing, onboarding, credentialing, and record keeping, clinicians and staff are free to focus on higher value priorities like communication and patient care. Smart automation can play a significant role in reducing physician burnout and improving mental health by alleviating some of the administrative and repetitive tasks that contribute to stress and exhaustion. Here are a few examples of how Boston WorkStation can help:

Administrative Task Offloading

Boston WorkStation can handle many of the tedious, manual tasks that weigh down physicians and staff, like appointment scheduling, prescription renewals, lab results, and data migrations to disparate systems. This reduces the time physicians spend on paperwork, allowing them to concentrate less on documentation and delivery and more on patient care.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) Optimization

EHR systems can be optimized with automation to sort through and organize patient information, track changes, and assist in data entry. This streamlines workflows and prevents the frustration of dealing with cumbersome interfaces, disparate data silos, and duplicate documentation. Boston WorkStation can easily access information in one system, and complete the required documentation in the next system. This speeds the entire workflow process, and ensures that information is only recorded once, with errors eliminated by 98%.

Eligibility Check Automation

By automating eligibility checks, Boston WorkStation works just like a human would, yet without the time, duplication of effort, and errors. The automation logs into the Medicare/Medicaid websites, then proceeds to search for the patient by SSN and capture eligibility and liability status. It prints and saves the documentation. If necessary, it compares and contrasts the last eligibility status, and writes the differences in the report. Once reports are finished, Boston WorkStation sends them out. We recently completed this automation for a client who stated, “Thanks again for another great automation! I am passionate about saving time and making workflows as efficient as possible. We have saved 60 hours per month of staff time.”

Patient Tracking Automations

This is a fairly new concept for many hospitals, but by automating the tracking of patients as they move throughout the system in areas like the ED, Surgery, Endo, or Labs, everyone can know where they are in the process of things. This frees up staff and clinicians to better coordinate workflows, and keep everything (and everyone) moving. Boston WorkStation automates the workflow, so that it is transparent to users, yet any department or physician can easily access the information, or receive a report, without duplicating effort or delaying patient care. Early adopters of patient tracking automations say it improves throughput and workflow processes and in turn improves patient care. We’re happy to discuss our projects with you.

Reducing Repetition

Sadly, repetition is present in every health system. Every clinician and administrative staff routinely handles inquiries, claims, or follow-ups that can be handled by smart automation technology, reducing the need to duplicate time and effort. We see this a lot in revenue cycle systems which can have as many as 18 different portals to log into and retrieve information. Boston WorkStation cuts through the chaos, accessing the necessary information or connecting the data between two disparate systems, with no human toll.

Population Health Goals

Automation can analyze large datasets to identify trends and insights, helping physicians make informed decisions without spending extensive time on manual data review. Data-driven automation can positively reduce burnout levels, by supporting clinicians in their decision-making and making it easier for them to access large datasets without the administrative burden. By implementing Boston WorkStation in these ways, physicians are telling us their workloads become more manageable, leaving them with more time for patient interaction, self-care, and professional development.

Why Boston Software Systems?

When fatigue plagues healthcare, it takes the focus away from patients at critical moments, and creates additional demands that contribute to stress and burnout. Boston WorkStation allows healthcare staff to “work smarter,” by removing the barriers and roadblocks to connected care, and giving humans back their time. Give us a call. With 35 years of experience in creating healthcare “toolkits,” we understand the best projects to automate for a fast return in savings and a lasting boost in emotional well-being.

Addressing Workflow Challenges in Healthcare

Workforce shortages are a major challenge for healthcare systems of all sizes. In order to address staffing shortages, many hospitals and health systems are turning to workflow automation. Workflow automation improves efficiency, reduces costs, and improves the human experience.

There are a number of ways that Boston WorkStation can be used to address workforce shortages. For example, workflow automation can be used to:

  • Automate repetitive manual data entry tasks.
  • Streamline processes, such as Human Resources onboarding and physician credentialing.
  • Improve communication between systems and departments.
  • Streamline the administrative burden of revenue cycle tasks.

Workflow automation is a powerful ally for health systems that are looking to address workforce shortages. By automating tasks and streamlining processes, humans are free to focus on more strategic, value-added work.

Streamlining Repetitive Administrative Processes

Repetitive administrative tasks can be a major drain on time and resources. Streamlining repetitive administrative tasks can save businesses time and money, and can also help to improve efficiency and accuracy.

Here are some additional benefits of streamlining repetitive administrative tasks:

  • Increased productivity: Employees can focus on more important tasks when they are not bogged down by repetitive work.
  • Improved accuracy: Automating tasks can help to reduce errors.
  • Reduced costs: Streamlining tasks can save businesses money on labor costs.
  • Increased employee satisfaction: Employees are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs when they are not bogged down with a manual, tedious, administrative burden.

Human Resources Processes and Tasks

Automating human resources tasks can save time and money, improve efficiencies, and reduce errors by 98%. It can also help to improve communication between employees and executive leadership. Some of the tasks that can be automated include:

  • Recruitment Correspondence: Automating the recruitment process can help to reduce the time and cost of hiring new employees. You can schedule interviews, request documentation, or ensure the new employees are properly trained and integrated into the company culture.
  • Performance Management: Automating performance management tasks can help to ensure that employees are evaluated fairly and consistently.
  • Compensation and Benefits Information: Automating compensation and benefits packages can be done effortlessly, without the administrative burden or human time drain.
  • Training and Development: Automating training and development can help to ensure that employees are up-to-date on the latest skills and knowledge.
  • Provider Credentialing: By automating the credentialing process–or as much of it as possible, it can eliminate delays between steps. It can make credentialing more efficient across the health system, from the initial application to completion of the final verifications.

Improved Communication Between Systems and Departments

Duplicate documentation in healthcare is a problem because it can lead to errors, waste time and resources, and make it difficult to track patient information. Boston WorkStation helps streamline the documentation process and reduce the need for duplicate entries, by checking disparate systems for information and ensuring that documentation is completed in a timely and accurate manner.

By taking these steps, healthcare organizations can help to reduce the problem of duplicate documentation and improve the quality of care that is provided to patients. Here are some additional benefits of reducing duplicate documentation in healthcare:

  • Improved Patient Safety: By having accurate and complete patient records, healthcare providers can make better decisions regarding patient care.
  • Reduced Costs: Duplicate documentation can lead to wasted time and resources. By reducing duplicate documentation, healthcare organizations can reduce the number of FTEs.
  • Improved efficiency: Streamlining the documentation process can help healthcare providers to be more efficient.

According to a report by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), “AI (smart automation technologies) could replace manual data-collection processes by populating missing data fields and reviewing clinical documents and extracting information for quality reports, saving physicians hours of work every week.” Isn’t it time to work smarter?

Why Boston Software Systems?

For 35 years, Boston WorkStation has been a digital ally to the people working in healthcare. From optimizing workflows, to boosting revenue cycle margins, Boston WorkStation helps bridge the gaps between disparate systems. We have the experience necessary to reduce pain points and barriers to connected care. Give us one hour, and we will tell you what can be up in running in days or weeks. With over 95% of our healthcare automation projects being completed in under 30 days, savings in time and efficiencies are right around the corner.

Automating Claims Status Checks: The Ticket to Accelerated Reimbursement

A healthcare claim status inquiry and response transaction is the communication between a provider and a payer about a healthcare claim. The payer goes through a procedure to check the claim requests for adequate information, validation, justification, and authenticity. At the end of this process, the insurance company may reimburse the money to the healthcare provider in whole or in part. But, this process is filled with time drains.

When a provider contacts a payer to check a claim status, it takes an average of 19 minutes and costs the provider $9.37. By the time a claim reaches a denied status, the provider has lost at least two weeks of valuable time (and money).

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 denials, and it’s easy to see how this cost can rise.

Automating Claims Status Checks Improves Efficiency

By simply automating claims status checks with Boston WorkStation, healthcare organizations can quickly identify missing claims or information, eliminate timely filing denials, and increase “dollars in the door.” Automating tasks in the revenue cycle allowed the team at Northwestern Medicine to reduce manual data input and oversight, and spend their time on higher-value tasks.

By automating this largely manual process, Northwestern was able to offset the work of 25 FTEs. This did not mean they were let go, but rather allowed to do higher value work, which led to increased employee satisfaction scores.

As Northwestern grew from 1,500 providers to over 3,000, they did not add ONE additional team member to the claims status process. These tasks were automated by Boston WorkStation.

Accelerate Claims Processing & Fast Track Reimbursements

Eliminating the need to manually check claim status frees up 25 minutes per inquiry that your team could be spending on relationship building and communications – activities that require a human voice and skillset. Boston WorkStation goes directly to a payer’s website and retrieves claim status details. Claim status details can then be prioritized and integrated into the EHR, increasing workflow efficiency, and reducing manual steps and duplication of effort. This helps reduce accounts receivable days and improves staff utilization by allowing more timely intervention on any claim that requires human follow-up.

Get More Done With Less Resources

Doing more with less has never been more important in healthcare post-COVID-19. Post-pandemic staffing challenges are higher than ever. Reduced staffing and increased costs make automation a necessity for healthcare. A tremendous amount of time is wasted by revenue cycle management departments checking on claims with no activity. A technology-driven, automated approach to claim status monitoring ensures resources are being expended where they will do the most good, which is working only those claims that have been identified as having issues or exceptions. The result is increased efficiency, faster reimbursement, fewer denials, and less disruption.

The Results are in the ROI

The initial claims status check process at Northwestern Medicine revealed a 330% ROI within the first year, which has continued to grow and will continue to grow in perpetuity. In addition to offsetting 24 full-time employees (FTEs) worth of work on an annual basis, the organization was able to double in size during this time. If it had not been for Boston WorkStation automating this process, they would have needed to employ a manager, a team lead, a supervisor, desk space, computers, and associated equipment.

According to a recent PwC CFO Pulse Survey, “One-third of finance leaders say they’re dedicating much more time to inflation than they were a year ago, while 36% strongly agree (and another 46% agree) there will be a recession within six months.”

CFOs are looking toward tech-driven products and services to meet ongoing business demands. By adding Boston WorkStation to front-end processes like claims status checks, Northwestern Medicine is confident that they can not only meet these ongoing demands, but thrive. And they’ve proven this, by exceeding their revenue targets for seven years in a row.

Why Boston WorkStation?

Experience, integrity, and 5-Star support. That’s why customers have turned to Boston Software Systems time and time again over 35 years. Tune into this interview or access the entire series with Northwestern and Matt Hawkins, as they discuss the value of healthcare-specific automation. If you’d like to know more about how automation can add value in the revenue cycle, let’s chat. With most of our solutions deployed in <30 days, savings are right around the corner.

Smart Automation Technology is a “Must Have“ for Healthcare Data Migrations

Data migration is the process of selecting, preparing, extracting, and transforming data. A successful EHR data migration is a key consideration for any system implementation, to improve data quality and eliminate redundant or obsolete information. Yet moving from a legacy system to a new EHR is an arduous process, fraught with delays, financial losses, staffing issues, and organizational chaos. The challenge of operating two EHRs concurrently during a staged implementation can create risks to patient safety, clinician efficiency, and employee burnout.

How Smart Automation Technology Smooths the Transition

It’s not just about bringing the data over, it’s about making sure it’s clean, actionable, and available in the new system, eliminating time drains and preventing revenue losses.

Examples of Legacy Data to be Migrated:

  • Allergies
  • Appointments
  • Clinical documents
  • Complete patient record
  • Immunizations
  • Medications
  • Notes
  • Past medical history (OB, Surgical, Social)
  • Problems list
  • Tests (Lab, Radiology / MRI)

When this data is not readily accessible to medical, administrative, legal, and other staff – patient care, organizational productivity, compliance, and user satisfaction decrease while costs and data management burden increase.

Unfortunately, information routinely excluded from the scope of an initial implementation project can include wait lists, appointments, personal preference lists, pharmacy dictionaries, allergies, lab orders and results, administrative documents, family history, social history, medication histories, and diagnostic reports. This presents a strain on clinicians and administrative staff, and a risk to patient safety.

As an example, medication doses, frequency, route, and instructions may have been entered as free text in the legacy system. During an implementation, 50% may map successfully, and come over to the new EHR. This means 50% won’t come over, creating workflow bottlenecks, patient safety issues, and ongoing stress.

What seems like a simple fix of manually entering demographics or legacy appointment data, literally turns into months of manual data entry and overwhelming burden.

Add Boston WorkStation at any time during the EHR migration process. Have the information you need, in the right system, for the right person, at the right time.

The Key Benefits to Smart Automation Technology

  • Offloads the clinical and administrative burden of data management.
  • Reduces human error, improves efficiency and productivity.
  • Requires no upgrades or disruption to existing user interfaces, software, systems, or security.
  • Accurately performs sorting, processing, complex calculations, and organizing data.
  • Is continuously efficient regardless of volume or variety of data.
  • Improves role-based usability within and across clinical, financial, administrative, technical applications, facilities, and specifications.
  • Reduces organizational losses from the burden of inefficiency.

HL7 projects are more labor and cost intensive, and do not organize the data, creating additional delays, and chaos. Smart healthcare automation is the missing piece to ensure the data is not only available, but integrated in the new system, providing a unified view, accurate validation, and tested for end-user performance.

Why Boston Software Systems?

We have connected to almost every application in healthcare either directly or through our partner organizations. We have successfully completed over 350 EHR data migrations with Epic, Allscripts, Cerner, MEDITECH, eCW, Greenway, McKesson, GE Healthcare, CPSI, Siemens, and many more. If it’s a healthcare application, system, or solution, you can bet Boston Software Systems has a history with them.

Knowledge, techniques, expertise, and the thousands of connections we have created over the decades give us a strategic advantage that continues to be at the core of each data migration.

This clear advantage allows us to deliver an automated and efficient workflow process with 100% accuracy, reliability, and scalability. Because we are focused most on our customers, we continue to keep the deployment of our platform as simple as possible. We don’t require special hardware or connectivity.

Give us one hour, we will tell you what can be up in running in days or weeks. With over 95% of our healthcare automation projects being completed in under 30 days, savings are right around the corner.

Automating Healthcare Scheduling, Reminders, and Patient Communications

Gartner predicted that half of healthcare CIOs would use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) by 2023. And they were right. More than 50% of healthcare organizations have already invested in RPA initiatives, compared to 5% in 2020. These organizations have discovered that RPA can result in a 30%-50% cost savings over manual data entry and process tasks.

The popularity of this “smart automation” technology is in its ability to empower the human workforce, by providing a “digital workforce” that works exactly as humans do, inputting, organizing, and moving data points at a computer screen, yet with precise accuracy, and requiring no sick days, benefit plans, or time off. While this digital workforce takes care of machine-capable tasks that require no human interaction, your human workforce can devote their time to tasks that do require a human element. Machine-oriented solutions like AI and RPA cannot decipher harmful actions, so humans need to perform those higher-value tasks that require empathy or caring. The end goal for machines is just to complete the task.

The Cost of Missed Appointments

Missed appointments cost healthcare as much as $150 billion annually. When the pandemic overwhelmed healthcare staff and systems, RPA bots streamlined the process, giving people back their time and making it easier to schedule visits. Bots can correctly schedule appointments, scanning wait lists for available slots, without haggling over dates. They also ensure accuracy, compliance, and can handle high volumes efficiently, allowing patients to schedule day or night. In addition, if vital information is needed to schedule an appointment to a specialist, bots are adept at collecting, inputting, and sharing vital data.

Automate Patient Reminders and Ongoing Communication

75% of patients complete pre-appointment registrations beforehand. Automation can send out the right pre-visit forms, and route completed forms to the right person at the right location, saving humans time and improving the scheduling process. In addition, automation can be used to send lab results to patients from LIS systems, bypassing the human effort of organizing, proofing, and sending. If patients are seeing specialists, this onboarding process can take as long as 21 minutes per appointment. By automating the entire process, this reduces the need for tedious, manual tasks that are prone to human error.

Is a Software Bot My New Co-Worker?

A bot for every person may conjure up an image of your favorite Star Wars droid, but in reality we are referencing a software robot. The key to workforce success is creating an environment where humans and machine bots can work together in harmony. It’s not about serving a cup of coffee or turning the lights on, but rather completing mind-numbing tasks that a digital workforce gobbles up like Pac-Man, allowing people to get more meaningful work done.

Benefits include:

  • Improved accuracy and compliance
  • 24/7/365 digital workforce
  • Data migrations from EHR, portal, API, or application
  • Invoice, forms, and patient processing

In Conclusion

Automation is not the panacea for everything in Health IT, but it is a key resource. Now more than ever, we need to double down on our efforts to support the people and services in healthcare. It allows us to elevate people from “human doings,” burdened by mind-numbing, repetitive tasks, to human beings, empowered by technology advancements. If we can help to expedite order entries, route lab results, gather data from disparate sources, or put together actionable reports, please give us a call. Our mission is to simplify tasks, so you can work smarter, not harder. Most solutions are implemented in < 30 days, with automated lab reporting live in < 14 days.

Why Boston Software Systems?

Boston Software Systems has been ensuring RPA projects remain on track since 1985. Bridge the gaps with a proven business model that maximizes effectiveness and reduces manual, tedious tasks across the healthcare ecosystem.

For more information on how we can help your organization navigate the healthcare automation landscape, please reach out. We’d love to share our success stories with you. Contact us at 866-653-5105 or visit us at www.bostonsoftwaresystems.com.

The HFMA Conference in Nashville – Turn It Up!

The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) Annual Conference is the premier event in healthcare finance, drawing more than 3,000 participants from across the nation and offering 4 strategy-focused general sessions, more than 70 educational sessions, and 7 content tracks over 4 days. This year’s theme is “Turn it Up,” which plays well in Music City.

The conference takes place at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Conference Center beginning on Sunday, June 25th and ending on Wednesday, June 28th. If you can’t attend in person, you can tune in to the general sessions virtually. These sessions feature keynote speakers, HFMA leadership, and award winners, and set the tone for the theater style program. For $79 for members and $179 for non-members, virtual conference registration provides access to all four general sessions, featuring seven keynote speakers.

General Sessions

You can earn up to 6 CPE Credits, Meet The New HFMA CEO, and Explore Insights from the Strategic CFO Panel of rockstars including Elizabeth Foshage, EBP and CFO at Ascension, James Lee, EVP and CFO at Multicare, Susan K. Nelson, EVP and CFO at MedStar Health, Matthew E. Cox, CHFP, CPA, EVP and CFO at Corewell Health, and William B. Rutherford, EVP and CFO at HCA. Each will share insights into how they approach today’s top challenges and make key decisions. They’ll discuss adapting to the changing economic environment, competing on new opportunities with fresh lines of business, managing organizational change, and ensuring future sustainability.

  • Outgoing HFMA President and CEO Joseph J. Fifer, FHFMA, CPA, will reflect on the progress he’s seen across the healthcare industry during his 10 years of service and challenge the audience to think big as we plan for the next 10 years.
  • Scott Rouse, world-renowned behavior analyst and body language expert, will share guidance on how you can improve your body language to support your intended messages and outcomes.
  • Thomas Fisher, Jr, MD, MPH, ER physician and author, will share riveting, pulse-pounding human stories from inside the ER that underscore the extent of racial and wealth disparities in our country’s healthcare system.
  • Alex Oshmyansky, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO, of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, will share how they are radically reducing prescription costs with a direct-to-consumer pharmacy. Their model removes the middleman and price negotiations to drastically expand access and affordability of lifesaving prescriptions…and more.

So what are some of the automation nuggets to think about while in Nashville? Here’s a few thoughts:

Think Of Automation As a Workflow Optimizer

A bolder approach is needed to optimize revenue cycle tasks. How do you navigate the barriers and challenges? Think of gains in efficiency, productivity, faster reimbursements, and greater alignment to workflow. Then, imagine your organization is better equipped to deliver value, improve processes, and realize a fast ROI.

Did you know there can be as many as 18 different screens to complete a manual revenue cycle transaction? These multiple screens and manual tasks in the revenue cycle cause unforeseen delays and complications.

The claim denials process is a great illustration. More than 80% of the processes involved in claim denials are manual, paper-based steps that require human interventions. Reducing redundant processes and associated technology costs that accompany the claims denial process can yield hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for a healthcare organization. This makes automation a winning investment for healthcare.

Align Change Management Needs To People

People are your greatest asset and your largest expense. Align change management needs to your most important resource, people. Recognize that there must be a clearly defined and communicated strategy behind any change management effort. It may be necessary to dive into claim-level detail to uncover the process people go through on a daily basis, and how operational success can be improved with the addition of a smart automation strategy.

Accurate documentation on a healthcare claim means dollars in the door, reduced denials, automatic corrections, and improvements to bottom line revenue targets. Simplify the process and reduce the cost (in time and people). One of the chief complaints we often hear is the “busywork” or “duplicate documentation” needed by staff, to complete everyday tasks. By illustrating the benefit to people, you’re better able to paint an accurate picture of the return on investment from an automation-first strategy.

According to HFMA, “One out of four executives in health systems and large hospitals suggest they are using advanced health IT, including RPA automation tools, to help increase economies of scale across revenue cycle operations.”

Schedule a Virtual Meeting With Boston Software Systems

We won’t be in a booth at HFMA in Nashville, but we’re only a phone call away. We were recently chosen by Black Book Market Research as the #1 2023 Revenue Cycle Automation & Workflow Optimization-Large Hospitals & Health Systems.

We’ll share some of our revenue cycle success stories like at Northwestern Medicine, where they saved 25 FTEs and realized a 350% ROI the first year after implementing a claims status check automation.

Another application automated the upload of all ethnicity and racial reporting for the Massachusetts Case Mix submission. They were able to “accurately update over 20,000 medical records, 6 months worth of manual data entry, in the course of one month, saving the organization $40,000.” There are many more success stories to share. We were chosen as a top revenue cycle automation solution, because of our ability to “bridge the gaps” between people, process, and financial health.

Give us a call at 866-653-5105, or reach out to us by email at: Matt.Hawkins@bossoft.com. With over 95% of our healthcare automation projects being completed in under 30 days, savings are right around the corner.

Enjoy the HFMA conference in Nashville!

Elevate Your Automation Capabilities: Improved Functionality in MEDITECH

MEDITECH’s Expanse EHR has been described as an elevated experience for clinicians, patients, and communities. Boston Software Systems has served the MEDITECH market for three decades, bringing increasingly sophisticated workflow automation tools to over 500 hospital customers on MEDITECH EHR systems.

Automate Your Future Appointment List From 1 System or 50

The need to manage the 20-30% of information that never completely makes it through a data migration, is what defines a smooth transition and reduces operational challenges that decrease patient volume, drain downstream costs, and create months of administrative burden.

Appointments, schedules, medications, labs, allergies, medical histories, and surgical preference cards, are among those items that exist outside of the initial integration. Whether you’re looking to add future appointments to one system, or fifty systems, the process is the same, does not involve human intervention, and can be completed over a weekend, with no disruption to staff.

Improved Time to Value

We’ve improved the time to value aspect of automation for all of our MEDITECH Expanse clients, by creating features and enhancements in Boston WorkStation 20 (BWS20) that make it more intuitive and easier than ever to create and benefit from automation technology.

  • BWS20 for MEDITECH cuts migration time and costs by as much as 50% and ensures completeness, accuracy, and compliance, with no adverse effect on existing architectures.
  • BWS20 for MEDITECH allows health systems to have the right information in the right system for the right user from day one.
  • BWS20 for MEDITECH ensures a complete and accurate patient record, and eliminates duplicate documentation issues.
  • BWS20 for MEDITECH makes it easier for users to create automations that improve business processes and remove the human burden (and waste) from the system.

Improve Operational Efficiencies In MEDITECH Expanse

New feature enhancements include:

  • User Interface (UI) feature enhancements
  • Enhancements to browser automation tools
  • Enhancements to File and Image utilities
  • Numerous documentation changes and additions

When all of your data is in one place, you can push and pull it from anywhere. The new features and enhancements, built specifically for MEDITECH, make it easier and faster than ever to eliminate mind-numbing manual steps and free your staff time for higher priority tasks.

Why Boston Software Systems?

Boston Software Systems is the leading standard for workflow automation and system integration, enabling organizations to streamline complex business processes and improve productivity. Over two thousand organizations worldwide respond to regulatory and business initiatives by using Boston WorkStation to automate and improve processes throughout a variety of departments. We’re excited for you to try these latest tools to improve organizational efficiency.

We’re ready when you are! For additional information, just give us a call to schedule a demo. After our initial conversation, we’ll provide you with a Scope of Work within 2 business days. Then, it’s time to schedule, with most implementations complete in < than 30 days.

Think Outside The Box with Healthcare Automation

The average administrative worker in healthcare accomplishes hours of repetitive, routine tasks every day that are better left to machines. Smart automation technology like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) mimics the activity of a human, by carrying out the same tasks and processes far more quickly, accurately, and tirelessly, which makes automation a great digital ally. Many are aware of the benefits of adding automation to revenue cycle tasks, but let’s take a look outside of the box to discover additional areas of return for automation technology.

Pharmacovigilance

Pharmacovigilance (PV), includes the detection, assessment, and prevention of adverse effects in medicines and vaccines. The major components of a pharmacovigilance system includes data collection, data analysis, and drug reporting. By automating the detection of adverse events and/or errors, we can improve drug and vaccine quality and reduce patient safety risks. Smart automation technology like Boston WorkStation helps pharma companies bring safe and effective drugs to market in a shorter time and at a lower cost, all without the human burden.

Electronic Batch Reviews

A batch record is a complete history of each product, including the raw materials and equipment used, procedures followed, and quality achieved. Accurate information eliminates the need to send the batch record document back for further remediation. Smart automation tools are specifically designed to meet speed and consistency in data entry, quality control, and audit reporting. Using automation to perform batch record reviews ensures that all the documentation necessary is included, and that the information collected from disparate systems is coherent, compliant, and within operational parameters.

Lab Registrations and Results Reporting

Lab registration is another great area to automate. One of our clients, a large outreach lab at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, streamlined their registration processes. Previously, the process required staff to pass through several healthcare information system (HIS) modules to complete. With Boston WorkStation, they enter codes into the laboratory module and these automatically populate the abstracting module. This automated workflow saved nearly 60 hours of staff time, or 1.5 FTEs each week. In addition, automation eases the burden of reduced staffing by automating lab results reporting and speeding efficiencies to downstream revenue targets and reporting agencies. During COVID-19, Boston WorkStation automated required result reporting to the HHS, state, and public health facilities, saving human workers hundreds of hours and ensuring accuracy.

Dictionary Updates

Data dictionaries provide structural meta-information about data definitions in health information technology (HIT) systems. A medical dictionary is a tool like a reference repository that tells users how clinical documentation links to administrative codes. Data dictionaries include terminology concepts, LOINC, SNOMED, ICD, and other codes which must be periodically updated to ensure accuracy and regulatory compliance. Industry standards have routine updates. These are tedious, manual tasks to complete, yet perfect for smart automation technology, which allows dictionaries to be constantly refreshed in order to reflect the most recent changes and updates.

Eligibility and Benefits Verification

By using smart automation tools like Boston WorkStation, health systems are able to quickly navigate between multiple payer portals or EHR modules faster and more accurately than human staff, and record the information in the right system, for the right user, at the right time. Boston WorkStation completes verifications for you so that your staff can dedicate their time to where they’re needed most. This speeds eligibility and benefit verification for treatments, procedures, medications, and admissions, improving patient outcomes without overburdening people.

HR Onboarding and Physician Credentialing

An overall staffing shortage continues to plague healthcare organizations, and has added to the burden and burnout employees and staff are feeling. Workloads have and will increase as the data continues to increase, about 50% more with each year. HR functions, updates, upgrades, and system changes can be more efficiently managed with automation. Physician credentialing is a complex process that involves various factors, making it prone to an excessive amount of paperwork, and manual data input. Prevent credentialing mistakes with smart automation. Automation relieves this laborious time-consuming process, saving physicians and administrative staff time, money, and reducing stress.

Compliance and Regulatory Tasks

Healthcare organizations can stay compliant with rules and regulations by incorporating smart automation into their technology stack. Processes that can be automated include audit trail generation, policy adherence checks, and productivity reporting. Smart automation “bots” can work 24/7, performing checks on a scheduled basis or triggered by a specific event, ensuring continuous monitoring of compliance requirements.

Why Boston WorkStation?

Boston WorkStation offers a frictionless process automation experience that has become a competitive advantage in today’s healthcare landscape. We understand the challenges, the barriers, and the workflows better than any other automation vendor. Boston WorkStation allows healthcare workers and administrative staff to focus on clinically relevant tasks rather than tedious, manual ones that often result in delays and distractions. In most situations, clients realize a substantial return on investment (over 300%) in the first year. Our automations are running in hundreds of hospitals, healthcare organizations, and technology partner offerings every day. Give us a call. We look forward to sharing our successes with you.

What Makes an EHR Data Migration So Difficult?

We’ve all read about the latest issues with Electronic Health Record (EHR) data migrations. Serious ones, like patient safety issues, missing appointments, problems, and time delays. The process of EHR implementation is not a new one. Why is it still so difficult to migrate data from a legacy system to a new EHR? Let’s take a look at three of the most common areas of frustration.

Poor Planning

On average, families spend two weeks planning where their pets will stay while going on vacation. Healthcare IT teams may spend as little as half that time planning a small data migration. We depend on the IT department and the vendor to walk us through each step of the process, yet we never look at the time, resources, training, or usability delays closely enough.

There is no cookie-cutter formula for a successful data migration, and unfortunately, most vendors want to repeat the same rote process every time.

Vendors have a pre-defined training curriculum and a fixed number of days on site, and anything outside of what’s offered requires additional resources. The problem with this model is that every organization’s data landscape is unique. It can include decades of old mainframes or homegrown databases, each with its own set of unique challenges. We underestimate the testing timeframes, the training timeframes, and the integration timeframes.

We are told, “Yes, we can bring that over,” when in reality the statement should read, “Yes, we can bring this over in 6-12 months, and until then you will need to manually input hundreds of data points into each patient’s chart, taking up copious amounts of time and resources. And oh, just to be clear, your operating costs are going to take a nosedive (as in millions of dollars nosedive).”

The latter would make us sit up and take notice, right? But most often the lack of communication and due diligence on the part of the organization leads to frustrations, losses, and unexpected costs, like the number of FTEs required for data input, and the staffers who just decide it’s too much and quit or retire early.

Technical Compatibility Challenges

The lack of compatibility between the data formats of the legacy system and the new EHR can present many issues like data accessibility, database integrity, new system readability, lack of data standards, sharing, and conversion to the new system. Patient demographic clean-up is a long and arduous process. The legacy system (or the transfer to the new system) may have duplicates. Another issue is the way the data is brought over from the legacy system.

An HL7 pipe will bring over all of the data, but it “dumps” it into an area, it does not organize it, and it does not do a good job of cleaning it up.

This is one reason that demographics, labs, histories, medications, and problem lists have to be verified. This means verifying with each patient on their first visit, and manually inputting the data into the new system. The transfer will take 6-12 months if the vendor does it, and healthcare cannot be placed on hold while this happens. The result is an overdue burden on the administrative staff as well as the clinicians. At each step of the patient process verifications must be made for demographics, past medical histories, and medications. Duplicates must also be removed, and updated. It becomes what seems like a never-ending nightmare.

Patient Safety Can be Compromised

When information is missing, unavailable, or not in the right system for the right user, it requires months of manual clean-up. Meanwhile, staff, clinicians, and patients are delayed. These delays and the lack of critical information can compromise patient outcomes. Issues with medications, allergies, and adverse events are commonplace. Not having the right information in the right system at the right time can have fatal consequences on patient safety. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reported significant problems in its effort to implement a new EHR. Thousands of clinical orders disappeared to an unmonitored inbox, causing patients to miss scheduled appointments.

In addition, the EHR failed to deliver over 11,000 orders for specialty care, lab work, and other services without alerting providers the orders had been lost.

The lost referrals resulted in care delays and were categorized by the VA safety team as “dozens of cases of moderate harm” and one case of “major harm.” This is the unacceptable result of a botched data migration effort.

How Can Boston WorkStation Help?

Aligning technology to existing healthcare workflows has historically been a difficult task for vendors. They want to create a “new” workflow, bringing over only partial information to a new EHR, which limits the integrity of the patient record. This impedes care coordination efforts, adding complexity rather than accelerating a culture of quality, performance, and value. What seems like a simple fix of manually entering demographics or legacy appointment data, literally turns into months of manual data entry and an overwhelming burden.

Automating the transfer of legacy information like appointments, schedules, past histories, and labs ensures information comes over correctly, with no duplicates, and is organized in the new system, for the right user, without manual intervention.

It is in the right chart, at the right time, ensuring compliance protocols, and saving time and resources. A strategic attribute of Boston Software Systems is that there’s no reliance on a particular system configuration. We have worked with every EHR vendor. If a person can sit in front of a computer and search, compare, and manually input data, we can accomplish the same thing thousands of times faster, more accurately, with less cost.

Give us a call. We can help at any point of the data migration process. Work smarter, not harder. Add Boston WorkStation to the team!