AI-infused automation: Reshaping patient care and provider efficiency

© sdecoret - stock.adobe.com

For physicians and other health care providers, delivering outstanding patient care is paramount, and one of the most impactful ways to achieve this is by streamlining clinical operations. Imagine a seamless flow of electronic health records accompanying patients at every stage of their care journey. Bottlenecks in patient onboarding, referral processing and scheduling, and capacity constraints highlight the urgent need for systems that can streamline workflows. Automation infused with artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a clinician’s digital assistant — supporting providers and ensuring their orders are accurately executed throughout the patient’s treatment.

AI-powered automation uses advanced machine learning and data analytics to automate processes, enhance decision-making, and improve efficiency across an organization. It enables smarter operations and innovative solutions tailored to business needs that can provide health care organizations with a “digital front door” to their services. For patients and clinicians, digital workers can perform consistently with 100% accuracy 24/7, helping minimize costly errors and increasing the speed and quality of patient care and clinician work.

Anna Twomey
_{© SS&C Blue Prism}

For heads of department, automation provides a new level of visibility into patient processes and exceptions while also offering dynamic resource allocation to combat capacity constraints, ensuring the right resource is available to do the right task.

In conjunction with the latest Forrester TEI 2024 Study of SS&C Blue Prism’s intelligent automation platform, we commissioned an independent survey of senior health care professionals to look at how AI-infused automation delivers measurable benefits. The research shows that health care professionals gain access to 64% better data quality, enabling faster, more informed decisions.

Enhancing operational efficiency in health care services

Intelligent automation is accurate, fast and efficient, prioritizing work and streamlining workflows while keeping data secure and compliant. Together, automation and AI reduce the risk of human errors and noncompliance so health care providers can focus on their patients rather than worrying about their data. And since clinicians can access accurate, up-to-date information, they can better care for their patients and make a diagnosis or referral faster than traditional methods.

Digital workers perform tasks with 100% accuracy around the clock, minimizing costly errors and ensuring consistent delivery of care. The combination of robotic process automation and business process management significantly improves speed, productivity, accuracy and auditability.

Patient satisfaction is inextricably linked to the ease and efficiency of their care journey, with 44% reporting better patient service and support. Automation and AI can enhance patient onboarding in both publicly funded health care systems and private, insurance-based multipayer systems by efficiently gathering patients’ medical and, where applicable, insurance data and automatically integrating them into their medical records.
Rather than filling out lengthy paperwork and often repeating information more than once, patients can input all their data into an online form. Using intelligent document processing, paper or unstructured documents can be digitized and scanned into an electronic health system. In fact, almost half (49%) of patients are onboarded faster with automation.
From here, a patient’s data can be automatically updated in the health care system, where clinicians can access them in real time.

Lessons from the pandemic

Health care providers face staffing shortages and increasing patient populations. For example, Indiana University (IU) Health is Indiana’s largest health care provider, with 16 hospitals and an extensive physician network, and it needed to streamline patient registration. With more than 250,000 monthly appointments requiring electronic record updates, manual data entry caused delays. The urgency of automation became clear when Indianapolis hosted the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, requiring the registration of players for daily COVID-19 testing.

To address these challenges, IU Health leveraged intelligent process automation to enhance patient experiences and operational efficiency. During the tournament, digital workers processed over 15,000 registrations swiftly and accurately, avoiding the need for temporary staff. Currently, they preregister over 300,000 appointments monthly, reducing processing time from 3.4 to 2.5 minutes per registration. This efficiency allows staff to focus on patient care and complex tasks.

Since 2020, IU Health has scaled from five digital workers handling three processes to 65 digital workers managing over 20 processes. Future plans include expanding automation to claims processing and other end-to-end solutions.

Designing a platform for the next frontier of health care

AI-powered automation future-proofs health care organizations by making processes more adaptable and scalable. Health care isn’t just about treating symptoms — it’s about having proactive and agile health care systems with more data and better connectivity to improve and transform patient experiences.

Rather than taking away from critical roles, adopting more AI in health care automation will create even more time for higher-value initiatives, such as improving operations and the patient experience, while also allowing clinical staff to focus on delivering excellent patient care.
To this end, 49% expect to see a strong improvement in patient care using this advancing technological solution, as it will see huge leaps in operational efficiency and happier clinical staff. AI-powered automation exists to augment work, and as more providers utilize automation solutions, health care will be transformed — and with it, patients’ and clinicians’ lives.

Anna Twomey is senior director, Healthcare Providers — Americas for SS&C Blue Prism. With more than 25 years of experience as a consultant and adviser in health care technology, she brings a range of expertise across disease surveillance, Accountable Care Organizations, population health management, regulatory compliance, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy rules, and more. Equipped with a teaching degree in computer science and multiple postgraduate certifications, she helps health care organizations transform health care processes and delivery through artificial intelligence and intelligent automation.