According to Precedence Research, the global market for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in healthcare is expected to grow from an estimated $1.4 billion in 2022 to an impressive $14.18 billion by 2032, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.1% between 2023 and 2032.
This remarkable growth highlights the increasing adoption of RPA solutions in the healthcare sector, driven by the need for improved efficiency, reduced operational costs, and enhanced patient care.
To guide you through this evolving landscape, we have compiled a comprehensive overview of RPA’s applications, use cases and benefits in the healthcare industry. Understanding how RPA can transform healthcare operations will empower you to harness its potential effectively and drive meaningful improvements within your organization.
Let’s delve into the key applications and benefits of RPA in the healthcare industry.
Table of Contents
RPA Applications in Healthcare
Robotic Process Automation is deployed in various industries, including healthcare, to automate complex, rule-based processes. The technology is well suited for repetitive and time-consuming tasks, where accuracy is critical. Healthcare is one industry that is beginning to reap the benefits of RPA.
For instance, RPA can be used to automate insurance claims processing. This includes verifying patient information, checking eligibility, and calculating benefits. By automating these processes, the AI-based technology can speed up claims processing and free up staff for other tasks.
The automation technology applications are also useful in streamlining the appointment scheduling process and performing tasks such as verifying coverage, checking availability, and sending reminders with little or no human intervention.
Also Read: RPA in Banking: Benefits, Use-Cases, and Steps to Deploy
Benefits of RPA in Healthcare
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) transforms healthcare by streamlining operations and enhancing service delivery. By automating repetitive tasks, RPA boosts efficiency, enabling healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care. Here are some key benefits of RPA in healthcare:
1. Better Data Interoperability
- Healthcare providers can create an intelligent document processing ecosystem to gather data from various systems and formats.
- AI technologies like OCR and machine learning enable easier access to this data.
2. Improve Healthcare Monitoring
- Clinicians can improve diagnosis and treatment before and after discharge with easy access to real-time data from medical records.
- RPA bots alert patients in case of emergencies or discrepancies.
3. Streamline Workflow Management
- RPA enhances workflow by reducing errors and manual involvement in healthcare processes.
- It streamlines tasks like patient scheduling and claims management.
- This enables staff to focus more on improving patient care rather than administrative duties.
4. Enhance Billing in Cycle
- Medical billers can effortlessly extract, evaluate, validate, and update patient bills for payment initiation.
- AI enables autonomous report management, streamlining the billing process.
5. Cost Management
- RPA reduces operating costs by automating healthcare processes.
- It eliminates paper-intensive procedures and limits human intervention in routine tasks.
- Healthcare providers can use RPA to enhance patient care management.
6. Improve Revenue Cycle Management
- RPA adapts to massive code changes in revenue cycles and medical billing, alleviating strain on healthcare systems.
- It streamlines medical billing and revenue management processes.
- RPA ensures faster resolution times for healthcare claims.
- RPA improves customer satisfaction by eliminating obstacles in managing healthcare claims.
Partner with us to integrate RPA and improve patient services.
Also Read: Top Healthcare Chatbot Use Cases
Use Cases of RPA in Healthcare
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is making significant changes in the healthcare sector by automating various processes to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Here are some notable use cases of RPA in healthcare for better understanding:
Patient Appointment Scheduling
Patients can book appointments online for many hospitals and individual doctors nowadays. However, processing these bookings is still a manual task often performed by an administrator. Manual appointments may lead to chaos when there are multiple consultations and some cancellation and modification requests.
Also, appointment scheduling should be accurate when it comes to patient care. A doctor must be available at the scheduled appointment, and the patient should be informed well in advance if there is any change.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
RPA bots, developed by healthcare software development services, can automatically manage appointment requests and schedule, update, and cancel them if required or desired. The following is the automated workflow of AI-powered RPA bots:
- Appointment slots are offered to a patient according to their requests and the availability of a doctor.
- After the patient has scheduled an appointment, it gets stored in the database and marks that appointment slot as unavailable.
- The patient receives appointment details by email or text message.
Compliance Check
RPA in healthcare makes tracking and documenting each step in structured log files and helps hospitals comply with external audits. As these processes are automated and handled by bots, the data confidentiality of the institute is also improved.
Non-compliance with regulations can lead to 30 to 40% of health insurance claims rejection. Therefore, a resilient compliance process becomes necessary to document and monitor each process step at every insurance claim stage and allow healthcare providers and insurance companies to process claims. With the application of RPA bots, these processes also enhance the confidentiality of data.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
Bots ensure higher transparency by creating and storing event logs of each step in the process. The following actions are the tasks managed by AI-powered chatbots:
- Eliminate or minimize the time spent collecting, compiling, detecting, and correcting inaccurate data from an extensive database.
- Automate and perform pre-compliance check internal audits to spot non-compliant processes.
- Quickly access and extract data from audit trails at any time.
Get in touch with us for our tailored RPA solutions that fit your needs.
Claim Management
After billing and compliance are taken care of, RPA in healthcare can also help automate claims processing by speeding up the entire process and improving accuracy. The automation technology based on artificial intelligence streamlines billing. The RPA-led claims management system eliminates errors made by administrators during claim processing.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
Healthcare providers hire AI developers to build AI-powered bots that automatically manage the billing and claim processes in line with medical services given to a patient. Here is how you can leverage bots to streamline billing and minimize human intervention:
- Identify which tasks in the claims process can be automated.
- Select the right RPA software for your needs.
- Train your staff on how to use the software and streamline your claim management process.
Patient Discharge Instructions
A medication and healthcare regimen should be followed when a patient is discharged from a hospital after receiving medical assistance. Some patients, however, forget the details or simply miss the date of a specific procedure required.
RPA bots can be used to send reminders. By automating this process, Digital Marketing healthcare providers can ensure that patients don’t miss their appointments and that appointment turnaround is increased. Along with the discharge process, using RPA can also optimize patient admission and help offer higher levels of customer service.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
RPA bots built by expert healthcare software development services or AI developers can add value to healthcare providers and patients. For example:
- Patients receive emails or text messages about their discharge and post-medication guidelines.
- The AI-powered bots send regular and timely notifications to patients about their schedules, appointments, and required tests as per the recovery plan suggested by their doctors.
Data Entry
Many hospitals in different parts of the world still rely heavily on their staff for paper documentation. That makes the industry error-prone and impacts functionality. RPA bots can digitize the process of data entry, migration, and extraction. Healthcare providers are now shifting to digitizing patient information and storing them electronically for easy and quick access.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
AI-powered RPA software can be both time and cost-effective. For example:
- The cost of RPA software is often significantly less than the resources hired to perform manual tasks.
- It can effortlessly record and monitor a large volume of data.
- Hospitals and clinics can deliver apt diagnostic tests and well-customized treatments.
Managing Healthcare Workflows
Managing a healthcare institution involves coordinating various workflows, including healthcare management, patient monitoring, and utilization management. These tasks are often routine but crucial for both healthcare providers and patients. Traditionally, hospitals and clinics rely on multiple staff members to handle these responsibilities manually, leading to inefficiencies and errors.
Implementing robotic process automation (RPA) can streamline workflow management in healthcare settings. Here’s how it helps:
- RPA centralizes and automates tasks, delivering cost-effective and accurate results.
- AI-powered bots excel in managing complex, rule-based processes, enhancing overall efficiency.
- By automating routine tasks, healthcare professionals can focus more on patient care and critical activities, improving customer service.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
Healthcare providers can use RPA in healthcare to manage their workflow and operations. RPA-based software solutions offer a host of features that can be used to automate various tasks, processes, and workflows. Here are some examples:
- Online appointment scheduling
- Patient check-in and check-out
- Medical records management
- Laboratory test results management
Remote Consultation and Care
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many patients are avoiding visiting hospitals and clinics to prevent the risk of getting infected. However, this may cause them to miss their regular health checkups and doctor appointments. COVID-19 pandemic guidelines such as maintaining social distance, using masks, and washing hands frequently are, to some extent, curbing the virus, but they aren’t foolproof.
AI-powered RPA and bots can offer respite in the time of the pandemic by automating repetitive customer service and remote care activity. The bots can address repetitive questions with consistency and effectiveness. As discussed above, RPA can also help follow-up for remote care, following industry guidelines to deliver specific communication at required steps in the patient care plan.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
With the outbreak of COVID-19, RPA in healthcare has become vital for providing remote consultation to patients. It can be used to set up virtual waiting rooms, where patients can consult with their doctors without physically being present in the hospital. AI-powered bots can virtually help hospitals manage their entire waiting list without human intervention. Healthcare providers no longer have to worry about managing a physical space for patients. RPA bots can:
- Easily add or remove patients from the waiting list.
- Send notifications to patients about their turn.
- Update patient records in the system automatically
Communications
Robotic Process Automation in the healthcare industry can be used to automate communications. The bots can be the first point of contact for patients, answer their generic inquiries on the website, escalate concerns to appropriate departments, and send emails to patients, vendors and staff.
Benefits of Using RPA Software:
In a healthcare setup, it’s vital to maintain constant and seamless communication with patients for follow-ups and provide them with updates about their health. If a hospital or clinic has to serve and manage a large number of patients, it becomes difficult for them to manage one-to-one communication with each patient. Here, RPA plays a crucial role in this regard:
- Sending reminders for medicine intake
- Dietary recommendations
- Appointment scheduling for regular checkups
- Updates about new health concerns, etc.
Partner with us to discover how RPA can help lower costs and increase profitability.
How Can PixelCrayons Help With RPA in Healthcare?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is transforming healthcare operations, leading to improved efficiency and patient care. By automating routine tasks such as patient scheduling, billing, and data management, RPA allows healthcare professionals to dedicate more time to patient interaction and quality care.
At PixelCrayons, we recognize the importance of using RPA to enhance operational workflows and reduce healthcare costs. Our expertise can help healthcare providers implement RPA solutions tailored to their needs, ensuring streamlined processes and better patient outcomes.
Contact us to learn how our RPA services for healthcare can drive innovation and efficiency in your healthcare organization!
