Hospital Management Adopting Robots to Reduce Costs

Large IT medical records projects have made some progress over the past decade, but there is still a long way to go.

Hospital Administration Robotic Process Automation technology is now gaining traction by having software Robots perform much of the on-screen, rules based work previously performed by administrative staff. These software Robots can perform the work of 2 or more staff and never make a human error. They can also operate 24/7, are never late for work and are not impacted by poor weather or other unexpected events.

Hospital Administration Robotic Process Automation technology offloads the boring and tedious work from staff and frees them up to perform more innovative service or frees up the administrative budget to be applied more directly to patient outcomes. This is generally seen as a win/win situation as staff are happy to be relieved of the more boring and tedious work.

Corporate and facility consolidation has been another strategy for reducing costs and improving service. These consolidations can result in multiple legacy IT systems needing to be integrated or replaced. This can involve large, long and expensive IT consolidation projects to eliminate the need for staff to deal with multiple systems and avoid the impacts of human error. Robotic Process Automation is proving to be a partial alternative, where the final result is a combination of back-end IT consolidation, supported by Robots still performing functions through the front end of some legacy components or directly through the front end of the new platforms.

Healthcare was an early adopter of Robotics, with surgeons leveraging the technology to perform operations remotely. This is in part why hospital administration robotic process automation is gaining traction so quickly.

Confidentiality of patient records is another consideration in the adoption of Robotic Process Automation in healthcare. Robots only perform activities that they are trained to do and log off systems when they are not performing work. These Robots can also work from virtual computers so that the screens are not visible by people who don’t need access. Together this reduces the number of people with access to patient information and therefore enhances security.

The recent expansion in the number of billing codes within the US medical system, moving from ICD 9 to ICD 10, has placed new demands on staff and systems and increased the potential for human error and revenue discrepancies. Robotic Process Automation is an ideal addition to supporting this transition. These software Robots can learn highly complex business rules and apply them exactly and rapidly, without making any human errors. This also ensures that no revenue opportunities are missed or backlog of billings accumulate.