Main image courtesy of Dominion.

Automating healthcare workflows continues to be one of the biggest goals of healthcare facilities of all sizes and specialties. After all, providers want to spend less time doing repetitive administrative tasks and more time using their expertise to clinically care for patients. There are already a lot of healthcare processes that are automated, and around 90% of healthcare systems have some kind of automated strategy in place for specific workflows. 

In this article, we’ll be covering topics such as:

• What healthcare automation looks like
• The benefits of automating healthcare processes
• Some of the best practices to follow when evaluating healthcare workflow automation software

But there are plenty of more processes that can be automated to improve efficiency and accuracy, while providing quality care to patients. There is always room for improvement, so if you want to learn more about how automation is making a difference in healthcare, and what some of the best practices to follow that experts recommend, let’s get started.

What is healthcare workflow automation software?

There’s a lot to like about automating the various healthcare workflows

Healthcare systems want to offer superior care that isn’t overly expensive. This can be hard to manage, given the complexity and varied workflows that are essential to running a functioning facility. In the past, every task had to be done by a person, which could delay care and cause issues with accuracy and efficiency. The automation of healthcare processes has proven to be a huge step forward to help providers and staff do more in less time. 

Even though many tasks have been automated, there are still plenty of time-consuming administrative tasks that take time to be completed by a person. This is not the optimal system that most healthcare facilities want to be running right now. Automating healthcare workflows refers to having software and technology like AI in place to automate repetitive duties, allowing clinicians to focus more of their time and expertise on patient care. Healthcare processes that are not automated are not only inefficient and can waste time, but they can affect the healthcare facility’s bottom line. Reducing the effort it takes to complete tasks and accelerating the workflows ensures that the healthcare establishment can see more patients and focus on better care.

What are some of the major benefits of automating healthcare workflows?

Healthcare systems that have automated workflows are much better off

We know that automation of manual and inefficient processes is the goal of many healthcare systems. When you start to see the advantages of going in this direction, you’ll notice that many processes that are a part of the daily operation are in need of a major automation investment. Workflows that can benefit from automation include:

• IT systems that include the ticketing system for facility tasks, as well as ensuring that the onboarding and offboarding of employees is seamless.
• EHR records should be automatically synced from records online, and not manually inputted, which results in a higher chance of errors and is a time-consuming task for staff members.
• Clinicians are required to create notes for patients' visits, but they shouldn’t need to do this manually every time they see a patient.
• HR paperwork should all be digital, providing new and existing employees a hub where they have access to their personnel information and can keep track of and update changes accordingly.
• The patient journey from appointment to follow up care can all be automated and include reminders and patient portals for patients to schedule appointments on their own time.

There are many more healthcare workflows that can benefit from automation, these are just a few of the processes that healthcare facilities may want to focus on in order to optimize the time of their providers and staff. 

Automating some or all of the above mentioned workflows yields a lot of benefits for healthcare facilities such as:

Improved patient care

Perhaps one of the biggest and most important benefits of automating healthcare systems (and learning what types of healthcare workflow automation software work for your facility) is that it can improve the quality of care patients receive. No matter what type of facility you’re in, the goal is to ensure all patients are treated timely and safely, according to their personalized needs. Reducing the amount of time it takes to complete tasks ensures that patients receive a diagnosis and can begin their treatment as soon as possible. 

Automation is much more accurate and efficient at doing repetitive tasks such as record management, uploading patient information, or scanning health records for potential issues with certain medications or therapies. Using AI to scan diagnostics is another area that has led to a lot of improvements when it comes to finding potential issues or concerns much earlier and faster than if a human were analyzing the image. 

When there are less manual tasks on their shoulders, providers and staff can focus instead on patient-centered duties that require the expertise and empathy of a human. Patients can also take charge of some aspects of their care, when they can schedule an appointment or speak to their practitioner through online messages or texts. Having more access to their healthcare providers improves patient satisfaction.

Less manual administrative tasks

Another one of the major benefits of automating healthcare workflows is that there are less administrative tasks for staff and practitioners to worry about. When a patient is in an encounter, the provider needs to document the information for their EHR in the form of a note. This is a task that can easily be automated with helpful applications like AI medical scribes. Instead of diverting their attention between what the patient is saying and creating a note that includes all that important information, the AI scribe allows the clinician to fully focus on listening to the patient. 

Simultaneously, the ambient medical scribe will transcribe the conversation and summarize it into the format of a note. The provider can then go in and make any adjustments or additions, but the essential information is already formatted and ready to sync with the EHR.

Using an AI scribe for notes offers so many advantages for providers.

• They no longer need to worry about missing information
• Their notes are more inclusive and contain more details
• The notes are accurate
• The AI scribe can offer insights or suggestions for next steps and treatment options based on medical data

In addition to providing better notes and documentation for patients, automated notes are also done by the time the encounter is over. There’s no need for practitioners to have to worry about completing notes on their own time. This extra administrative load is one of the main reasons providers of all specialties experience burnout. Taking advantage of automation for this important administrative task makes a lot of sense when healthcare facilities want to improve operational efficiency, and cut down on the cognitive load of providers.

• One of the best AI medical scribes is Playback Health, which offers a full suite application that can automate notes as well as the patient journey. Consider checking them out and seeing if their ambient medical scribe is just what you need to transform the note-taking process into an automated task.

Improve the finances of the healthcare system

We mentioned that manual systems cost healthcare facilities money in the long run because they are incredibly inefficient. Automating these workflows improves the bottom line of healthcare institutions because there are less delays and providers can see more patients. When processes like the patient journey are automated, you can expect to see an increase in patient throughput, faster admissions and check-ins, as well as a reduction in the time it takes for clinicians to see a patient who is already waiting.

Seeing more patients increases the ROI for the healthcare facility, but not at the cost of the quality of care. Instead, automation takes care of time-consuming administrative tasks, while the clinician can offer more of their time with the patient, who ultimately will receive better care. 

Best practices: evaluating healthcare workflow automation software

How do you choose a workflow automation software?

If you’re considering a switch to automation for any of your healthcare establishment’s workflows, that’s great news. The next decision you’ll need to make is to evaluate the type of workflow automation software you need. There are a few things to consider. 

1. Identify the processes that can benefit from automation

We’ve mentioned some of the processes that can benefit from automation (billing, insurance, patient journey, IT, etc.) so the first step you should take is identify the ones in your healthcare facility that could be automated. If some of your administrative or clerical workflows are already automated, see if there’s a way to extend those automated proceses to trigger additional automated events.

2. Determine what software and technology will work with your facility (and your budget)

There is a lot of automation software available, so you’ll need to find one that works with your current system and that will address some of your biggest pain points. If you want a way to automate the entry of information into a patient’s EHR, make sure the software you’re interested in can sync with your current EHR system. This kind of information might not be available to all stakeholders, which is why when making a decision to automate, lots of departments in the healthcare facility should be involved. 

3. Decide the paths of automated workflows

Know what you want the automation to do, and what will trigger a response. When a new patient makes an appointment online, do you want to make sure there are automatic text messages sent to remind them? Or when notes are completed and approved using an AI medical scribe, should they sync automatically with the patient’s EHR? These are the pathways that need to be mapped out. 

4. Ensure training for everyone

Staff and providers can’t properly utilize the new automated workflows if they don’t know how to use them, or they aren’t aware of the benefits. Ongoing training provides not only an introduction and overview, but allows users to really get comfortable with the technology they’re using by providing hands-on training from the automation software vendor.

5. Monitor and analyze the data

You can’t know what is working unless you monitor the workflows and analyze the data. Are the automated processes helping out staff members? Do they give providers more face time with clients and less time spent on administrative tasks? Is everything moving as efficiently as possible? These are some of the questions you can ask, and see what the data says and how the users feel that it can be improved upon. There’s always room to get more streamlined and efficient when it comes to automating healthcare workflows, so the input from staff and clinicians is very valuable.

These best practices are a great place to start, but the next step is reaching out to specific vendors that specialize in healthcare workflow automation software.

Automating healthcare workflows is the future

AI and automation are improving the efficiency and accuracy of a variety of healthcare workflows, benefiting both patients and providers. Clinicians should spend their time and expertise giving the best care possible to patients, not completing tedious, repetitive tasks that can be taken care of by automation. This modern approach to managing the various processes that are required to run a healthcare facility is one of the best ways to offer patient-focused care, and allow providers to concentrate on that care.