Main image courtesy of Microsoft.

Workflow automation has been a welcomed addition to modern healthcare systems. In fact as of 2020, around 90% of large healthcare facilities use automation for a variety of different processes. The amount of establishments that have been introducing more automated workflows and including AI in everyday tasks is only going to increase. 

This article will be discussing:

• What healthcare workflow automation is
• The benefits of automating tasks
• Healthcare processes that can be automated

Healthcare workers such as doctors and nurses don’t want to continuously be overburdened with endless administrative tasks in addition to their care of patients. These inefficient and repetitive work processes can take a lot of time, and they can significantly contribute to burnout. What if there was a better way to streamline disparate workflows, and improve how healthcare facilities both large and small operate? 

What is healthcare workflow automation?

How are healthcare processes automated?

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In our fast-paced and ever-changing world, it can be overwhelming at times to keep up with all the tasks demanded from our jobs. This is especially true for healthcare workers, who need to ensure they not only complete their clinical care of patients, but that administrative and clerical duties are also done promptly. There’s only so much cognitive load that a person can handle before they start to feel overwhelmed and burned out. The healthcare profession is especially susceptible to this problem, and studies show that only recently the amount of clinicians that reported feeling burned out has dipped below 50%.

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Burnout and being overworked can be the result of many things, including inefficient workflows. Healthcare systems of all sizes have all kinds of workflows happening simultaneously, but not all of them are optimized to save time and money effectively. Automating healthcare workflows is one of the best solutions to this problem, as it uses technology and AI to automate repetitive processes to improve efficiency, reduce medical errors, and help providers spend more time focusing on the care of their patients. 

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Advances in AI have made a large impact on how many processes can now be automated, so it’s up to healthcare facilities to take this seriously and look at where their workflows are inefficient and determine how best to improve them.

Benefits of automating workflow

There are lots of advantages to automating healthcare workflow

There are all kinds of workflows occurring simultaneously in any given healthcare setting, including clinical care, billing, administration, and regulations—all of which have their own unique outputs and needs. They all contribute to the successful flow of the facility, but are there ways in which they can be improved? There is definitely room for improvement and automating healthcare processes is one of the biggest steps a healthcare establishment can take to increase the efficiency of workflows and save money at the same time. 

The benefits of healthcare workflow automation include: 

• Reduce the amount of administrative tasks. One of the top processes that can benefit from automation are all the administrative tasks performed by members of the healthcare team. For office staff, this can mean using digital solutions for appointment scheduling, data entry, and the management of patients’ medical records. These kinds of tasks can be very time consuming, and often get very repetitive. This can increase the chances of errors or omissions. Not to mention their attention and time would be better focused on patient care, which is one of the major benefits of using automation. 

Another important process that can be automated is creating notes during patient visits. AI medical scribes like Playback Health can help providers focus on their patients during encounters, not creating a note. Ambient scribes can transcribe the doctor/patient conversation, summarize it, and put it in the correct format. The note is completed by the end of the appointment and synced with the patient’s EHR. Automation of this kind can give hours back to practitioners who no longer need to worry about completing notes during the encounter or afterwards on their own time. 

• Better patient care. The goal of healthcare systems is to provide their patients with the best care possible. And when they can do that, it leads to better patient outcomes and improved satisfaction. Automating processes can reduce errors, and give patients the timely care they deserve. Issues can be caught in much less time with the help of automation, leading to diagnoses and treatment plans that can start much sooner and with less delay. 

• Cost savings. The cost of administrative tasks take up a large part of healthcare spending, and they are not very efficient. Having healthcare staff handle duties like data entry, appointment scheduling, billing, and manual EHR management can take up a lot of their time. Most of these tasks are very repetitive and can get tedious quickly, which is why it only makes sense to automate them. AI can quickly and more accurately perform these functions, freeing up more time to focus on patients.

Automation can also improve the revenue cycle, which often gets delayed due to errors or claim denials. Using automation (such as AI medical scribes) to code patient encounters is a much more reliable and accurate way to ensure claims are approved and paid timely. Prior authorizations and referrals can also benefit from automation, so that patients no longer need to wait days for approval and can start treatment sooner. The revenue cycle is one of the best uses of automation, which can save the facility money that can be better invested in improved patient care options or expanding existing staff.

• Assisting with compliance tracking. Another essential task that can benefit from automation is compliance with regulations. All healthcare systems need to ensure they’re in compliance, but this can often be difficult to track, since standards change or adjust frequently. Automating this workflow improves the efficiency of the facility, as no one needs to manually track revisions, new laws, or worry about review and approval processes for documents.

Automation creates an audit trail as well, which is essential in healthcare, and notifications and alerts can be sent  out to the appropriate staff when something needs their immediate attention.

Healthcare processes that can be automated

There are a lot of healthcare workflows that can benefit from automation

While you may already be aware of some healthcare processes that can be automated, you may not know that there are many more than you think! The technology to automate your workflows is available right now and has been proven to increase efficiency, help providers offer better care to patients, and improve patient outcomes.

IT systems

Since IT departments in hospitals are already in charge of governing the flow of information between staff members and high tech devices, you would think that they already have a lot of their processes automated. However, this isn’t always the case, and there are a lot of ways in which any healthcare facility’s IT department could employ more automated processes. One of the most obvious is to ensure that the IT ticket system is automated. This ensures requests are met in a timely manner, and they are marked closed when they’re resolved. Using automation from end to end in ticketing means that no one needs to manually check it off, or worse, inquire whether or not the ticket was fulfilled.

Automation processes can also benefit the onboarding/disabling user access. When new employees are hired or staff leave their positions, their status needs to be updated accordingly. You want the new clinician to have immediate access to everything they will need to do their job, and not need to wait days for access to be approved and functional throughout the facility.

HR file management

There is a lot of paperwork still being used in healthcare HR systems, making this process a great one to automate. Onboarding new staff members requires lots of information and forms, so why waste time printing all those out when an HR package can be sent to the new hire as soon as they accept the offer? This is easy to do when the HR system is automated. Another important process that falls under HR is organizing the ongoing training and education that are required of a variety of healthcare positions. Having a process that can track this information, give reminders when credits are due, or provide options to staff of how to fulfill those requirements ensures no missed dates or expired credentials. 

EHR and patient management

When healthcare staff need to input patient information directly into the EHR system repetitively, it can lead to a higher occurrence of errors. The wrong information can delay the right diagnosis or treatment plan for the patient. Instead, having an automated process ensures that the transfer of patient information from other facilities or labs is updated immediately to include the most accurate and up to date information. 

Appointments/reminders

The patient journey from seeking out an appointment to getting discharged is something that can definitely benefit from automation. Most patients want the flexibility to book their appointments online, or get in touch with their provider via text/email if they have a concern. Offering online scheduling or providing a chat bot to direct new patients to where they can schedule would be incredibly helpful. Once the appointment is scheduled, an email/text is automatically sent out with the details, and reminders can be sent out leading up to the day of the encounter.

Patient onboarding can require lots of forms and paperwork. But all of this again can be automated so that it's done online in a patient portal, which decreases the amount spent on paper and the potential for information to be left out. Having a place such as a patient portal is a great way to streamline all these administrative tasks into one localized place. Patients want more communication with their healthcare providers, not less, and automation is a great way to expand this.

Notes

We mentioned earlier that automating notes has transformed the encounter for a lot of providers. Since the AI scribe transcribes the conversation, clinicians no longer need to worry about missing information, or losing focus because their attention is divided. The AI scribe takes care of creating the note, so the provider can focus on what the patient is trying to tell them, and be more present while they speak. This automation reduces the chance of errors, gives practitioners more time with patients, and helps patients to feel like they are being heard and understood. 

Insurance

Using AI scribes to automatically code during encounters is an accurate way to increase claim approvals. Oftentimes claims are held up or denied due to errors or misinformation, which creates more work for staff who need to follow up and fix the problems so that the claim can be resubmitted. Automating this workflow also ensures that claims are filled out and sent out as soon as possible, and aren’t waiting on the desk or in the inbox of someone who is already overwhelmed with work. 

Will you start automating your healthcare workflow?

Healthcare workflow automation is one of the best ways to not only modernize your facility, but increase the efficiency of a variety of essential processes. You need healthcare workers to focus their valuable time on the clinical care of patients, not doing repetitive administrative tasks. Healthcare automation for essential processes can free up clinicians by taking care of these issues and improving communication among team members. This ensures patient safety, and helps the facility to run efficiently.