Automation In Healthcare: Driving Efficiency And Streamlining Workflows
Categories :
Automation in healthcare can address many of the challenges the industry faces in 2024, and now is the perfect time for healthcare organizations to invest in automated solutions.
Automation refers to using technology to perform tasks with little to no human involvement. In healthcare, automation can help mitigate rising costs and close staffing gaps by improving eligibility and benefits verification, patient registration, communication, billing and payments, schedule management, clinical outcomes, and more. Importantly, automating these critical steps in your team’s workflow can relieve the burden on administrative staff, saving time that they can use on other tasks.
Read on to learn more about how automation can improve your healthcare organization’s workflows.
Automating eligibility and benefits verification
Eligibility and benefits verification can be daunting, but automation can dramatically reduce the time it takes to verify patients’ insurance information, expediting payments and increasing cash flow for healthcare organizations.
Automating eligibility and benefits checks helps to reduce claims errors. More than half of claims denials are due to mistakes made on the front end. But by automating the verification process, provider groups can reduce the risk of human error and avoid data-entry mistakes.
Insurance verification automation saves significant time for healthcare organizations, too. Amid the ongoing healthcare staffing crisis, it’s crucial to make the best use of the staff you have. Automating eligibility and benefits checks allows administrative staff to spend less time verifying patients' coverage, which allows them to focus on more complex tasks.
Furthermore, automation can help healthcare staff improve financial transparency for patients. Understanding health insurance can be challenging, but automation can help you determine patient copays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket obligations more quickly than ever before—so you have the information you need to communicate with patients upfront about their financial responsibility.
Streamlining patient registration
Introducing automation into the patient registration process helps healthcare organizations reduce the time and effort required for patients to complete paperwork and improve the accuracy of patient information.
With automation, patients can complete registration before their visit on their own time and using their own device—helping cut down wait times. Plus, logic-driven workflows can automatically present the right forms to the right patients at the right time.
If your patient intake platform has bidirectional integration with your electronic health record (EHR), you can auto-populate the EHR with patient information and medical history collected at intake—and, on the other hand, auto-populate information into the forms you present to patients at intake. This automated step reduces the amount of time it takes for patients to complete their forms and eliminates the need for front-desk staff to manually enter patient data. Automated bidirectional integration ensures that patient information is accurate and up to date.
Automating patient communication
With the right digital tools, organizations can automate patient communication. One of the most impactful types of communication to automate are appointment reminders. Automating those emails and text messages saves time at the front desk, as staff no longer need to call patients to confirm whether they’ll make their appointments.
Furthermore, automation can help you deliver important health information and patient education, such as pre- and post-visit instructions. This information can include details about preparing for procedures, medications to take or avoid, and any follow-up care. By providing patients with clear and comprehensive instructions, automation can enhance their understanding of their treatment plans and promote better adherence to medical advice—which can improve their health outcomes. And when you automate those communications, you can achieve these benefits without requiring staff to manually print or send the information to each patient.
Automatic billing and payments
By automating the billing and payment process, healthcare organizations can reduce the time and cost to collect patients’ financial responsibility while providing a more convenient payment experience.
You can automatically charge a patient’s card on file when their balance is due, so your organization can collect what you’re owed on time and in full—without the need to print and mail paper statements or to call patients to remind them about their balance due. Automatically charging patients’ cards also decreases the number of days in accounts receivable and minimizes statement costs, helping your organization save money.
Not to mention, automated payments offer a more convenient process for patients, who can rest assured that they won’t forget about their bills and incur any late fees or medical debt.
Automated schedule management
Schedule management is another area where automation can support healthcare organizations. Automated scheduling tools can provide patients with reduced wait times for an appointment, keep providers’ schedules full, and increase patient satisfaction.
You can automatically send email or text message reminders to patients about their upcoming appointments, which can help patients remember their appointments and arrive for them on time. Plus, you can automatically backfill cancellations with an automated, text message-based solution. The tool can automatically send messages offering clinically relevant patients an earlier slot, connecting patients to care sooner and closing last-minute appointment gaps—without requiring staff members to call patients to offer the new appointment time.
Automation can drive greater efficiency and streamline workflows across your healthcare organization. By automating tasks such as eligibility and benefits verification, patient registration, communication, billing, and schedule management, healthcare organizations can save time, reduce errors, and improve patient care—while reducing administrative workflows.
Automated tools not only help address common challenges for organizations, such as rising costs and staffing gaps but also help make healthcare more accessible and easier to navigate for patients. The information that automated tools can provide for staff—like patient copays—can help you enhance financial transparency for patients, and automated messages can provide patients with the information they need to optimize their care.
