How Intelligent Automation is Changing Healthcare

These are exciting times for technology and automation in healthcare! Why? Because of the pervasive availability of offerings, such as EMR systems, clinical imaging systems, ERP, AI, ECM, RPA, DSM, BI, PI, NLP, ML, cloud environments, office devices and personal devices. To make this easier, let’s collectively refer to the range of technologies as “Intelligent Automation” tools.

After nearly two decades observing the evolution of adoption of healthcare technology, I, like many others, often contemplate how care settings aim to improve their existing technology investments. The answers to this question lie in the ways Intelligent Automation streamlines processes to address the following key challenges in healthcare relating to administrative burden, interoperability, data governance and sustainability:

1. Cost of operations
2. Security and compliance
3. Reimbursement levels
4. Staffing

1. Cost of Operation

Costs of operating a care provider can be challenging to analyze. The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) highlighted this in its “Cost Management in Healthcare: Status Quo and Opportunities” report. Among its conclusions, HFMA suggested “bolstering data accessibility and upgrading digital platforms and systems to enable financial data to facilitate strategic decision making throughout the organization.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS) clearly agrees with that conclusion.  Their measurement for value-based purchasing (VBP) even includes an efficiency and cost reduction component. So how does this translate to your care organization?

Clinical adoption of additional Intelligent Automation tools for capture routing and integration will enhance electronic health record systems.

• Provider organizations can then reduce costs with expedited clinical decision-making.
• Remote access enables essential staff and eases efforts with compliance follow up for healthcare regulatory requirements.

A prime example would be fax referrals still being received.

• Often faxes are still being manually printed, page sorted, scanned and manually attached to a patient or resident record. Alternatively, applying Intelligent Automation tools would capture the fax, render it into digital format (e.g.-.PDF, .TIFF), recognize and tag key patient metadata and populate a portal inbox for necessary review by clinical and case management staff regardless of where they are located.
• A medication reconciliation or managed care claim correspondence fax can be automated and integrated into the patient EMR or billing record as well.
• Taking it a step further, use of DSM platforms can be a highly secure and timely alternative to promoting interoperable communication for your care organization.

Consider how your practice currently captures, classifies and pays for supplies and services used by your care settings.

By leveraging the power of Intelligent Automation tools for capture, classification and comparison of what is received and paid to suppliers in your AP and Supply Chain areas, you will:

• Reduce the amount of time your employees spend on this process
• Reduce clerical errors and have an opportunities to manage and control costs
• Avoid duplicate invoice payments
• Better utilize supplier discount arrangements
• Reduce paper consumption
• Perform automated spend analysis by automating invoices, receiving documents, reviewing contract terms and conditions and related data accordingly.

2. Security and Compliance

In 2022, the HIPAA Journal reported that in one single incident, 2.6 million people were impacted by a healthcare organization’s failure to safeguard sensitive medical information.    Other, well-frequently-reported incidents such as the Change Healthcare breach are publicized evidence that healthcare organizations continue to be targeted by cyber criminals at alarming rates.

Manual and virtual handling by staff of patient PHI and PII occurring in care settings can be mitigated further in care settings. Intelligent Automation tools and best practices provide a layer of secure capture, recognition, classification, routing and storage of data and documents. This will help reduce the risk of intentional or unintended exposure of PHI and PII to unauthorized users.

Examples of data and documents that often still require Intelligent Automation to replace less secure manual or semi-automated handling typically include:

• Medication reconciliations
• Patient test results
• Patient histories
• Patient financial correspondence
• Staff credential information
• Vendor invoices

Alerts for accessing, downloading, e-mailing, printing and even copying PHI or PII are more attainable than ever with current automation technology. Additionally, Intelligent Automation tools help ensure a holistic, layered security approach across your endpoint devices, IT architecture, and platforms such as EMR, ERP and ECM.

Implementing Intelligent Automation tool solutions that secure clinical and financial content within your team’s EMR, ERP and ECM environment will strengthen your organizational strategy and help prevent security incidents.

3. Reimbursement

HFMA is a strong advocate for technology adoption to enhance the revenue cycle of healthcare providers. HFMA and healthcare revenue cycle professionals highlight challenges with operating margins, denials and collections stemming from the incorrect application of charge codes for procedures and professional services.

Leveraging Intelligent Automation for insurance verification at the time of patient check-in presents an excellent opportunity.

• Using Intelligent Automation tools to assist with submitting clean claims will positively impact revenue cycle KPIs.
• Additionally, Intelligent Automation can help identify denial data trends and determine root causes. For example, automation can be utilized to identify irregularities between authorized procedures and their billing, using data such as clinician demographic, patient demographic, place of service and revenue codes.

You can also see potential impact for tightening up the integrity of patient accounts by accessing my previous blog post entitled Unlock Value for Your Healthcare Organization with a Digital Mailroom.

4. Staffing

This article from the National Library of Medicine describes, “Intensive work, stress and the need for long-term planning of training and professional development in the medical field – these are the problems that plague health professionals.” Staffing challenges are often influenced by the way people work. Low patient and staff satisfaction scores are key predictors of staffing challenges and turnover. The costs of turnover include both financial (e.g., traveling nurse and clinical staff signing bonus programs) and cultural (e.g., diminished team morale and loyalty). How your practice’s staff operates from the time a referral is received to when a patient is asked to pay for care beyond insurance coverage significantly impacts staff morale.

By implementing robust Intelligent Automation – such as advanced document and data workflows – to enhance electronic health record systems, healthcare providers can expedite clinical decision-making and chart completion while also securely enabling remote staff access.

Automated processes for pre-registration, consent forms, patient appointment reminders, insurance coverage verification and denials analysis present significant opportunities.

• Clinicians will have more time for patient care and with greater confidence chart quality.
• Health Information Management (HIM) staff will spend less time ensuring chart completion.
• Clinical and administrative staff can handle increased patient volume and administrative tasks as patient numbers grow.
• Remote access promotes a better balance of work life and flexibility for all staff.

Enhancing the ways staff work with data and documents through Intelligent Automation will lead to improved staff satisfaction. Consequently, patient experience will improve when interacting with care providers and administrative teams, resulting in higher patient satisfaction and loyalty. This, in turn, will lead to reduced staff turnover.

Summary

Transitioning from the status quo of your healthcare organization’s current technology stack by addressing specific workflows and platforms with relevant Intelligent Automation tools enables your healthcare organization to streamline processes and tackle prominent issues more effectively.

Konica Minolta’s Healthcare team will work with you to assess the value Intelligent Automation will bring by reducing costs, securing documents and data, enhancing reimbursement metrics and improving staffing initiatives. Start your journey with Intelligent Automation by reaching out to our team for collaboration.