A growing number of administrative challenges continue to impede operational efficiency and patient satisfaction for healthcare providers.

Some of the most common healthcare challenges that are grappling healthcare providers are-

  • Continuous digitization of patient records
  • Data regulation and compliance
  • Growing EHR data entry and operational cost.
  • Lack of integration support

To combat these challenges, most industries are taking the road to digital transformation. Hence, healthcare providers are facing increased pressure to speed up the adoption of new technologies such as RPA and AI in Electronic Health Records (EHR).

As per Gartner, By 2023, 20% of all patient interactions will involve some form of AI enablement with clinical and non-clinical processes.

Electronic Health Records(EHR) are the digital version of your health record. Using EHR can change the course of action for healthcare providers in offering excellent patient care.

Previously we have seen the role of automation in electronic visit verification process and how it can help caregivers and care recipients altogether. Now let’s explore the use of RPA in Electronic Health Record management in this blog.

What is EHR Processing?

EHR processing is real-time patient records handled by the patient’s provider over time and made accessible to anyone authorized to see them. EHR covers a broad range of patient medical information such as-

  • Medications
  • Diagnosis
  • Medical History
  • Treatment Plans
  • Laboratory Test Results
  • X-Ray Images
  • Vaccination Dates
  • Allergy Issues

Electronic Health Records(EHR) work as intelligent, evidence-based tools and help healthcare professionals make better, informed decisions and conclusions to treat their patients better.

In addition, EHR assists in accelerating the clinical workflow and improving patient care quality. But clinical knowledge extends far beyond the patient context knowledge and administrative knowledge, and EHRs can rarely capture all of the information significantly.

Hence, to make EHR easy, flexible, and intelligent, RPA and AI can be leveraged to improve EHR processing rapidly.

How Can EHR be Improved with Automation and AI?

With Electronic Health Records (EHR), documents are everywhere. Extracting the exact information from unstructured data and processing it further is a cumbersome task for healthcare agents.

Also, maintaining a large number of patient reports and adding relevant information to patients’ appointments and other documents makes EHR processing time-consuming and inflexible.

And, what if you are not able to integrate your Electronic Health Records to your preferred channel of yours. The solution is in RPA and Artificial Intelligence. Making the best use of automation with machine learning and AI algorithms enables healthcare professionals to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

Automation solutions enables healthcare professionals to spend their valuable time taking the best care of their patients and making better clinical decisions instead of extracting data from an array of documents.

EHR Process That Can Be Automated With RPA & AI

EHR processes that can be automated with RPA &AI are as follows-

  • Data Processing
    Healthcare professionals carry a wide array of documents such as medical history, x-ray images, treatment plans, and others in an unstructured format. Unstructured data makes it difficult for healthcare professionals to extract the right information from lengthy clinical packets. But, using Intelligent Document processing makes the data processing a child’s play. With inbuilt NLP & OCR, the RPA tool can reduce manual errors and operational costs by iterative activity. And Machine Learning(ML) algorithms enable healthcare professionals to classify and identify relevant data in a matter of seconds. That’s how the RPA tool enables healthcare professionals to keep all the medical records in one place and get them in the shortest possible time frame.
  • Report Management
    Think about all the hard work healthcare professionals has to do in maintaining bills, patient appointments, registration, and insurance claims? Looks labor intenisve? RPA is at your service. Leveraging automation solution RPA help healthcare professionals in two ways. First, by using intelligent document processing solutions, healthcare professionals collect and compile the data from multiple legacy systems into one place. Second, the AI bot can update the system and share information instantly. From here, healthcare professionals can easily access the relevant data and process payment for bills, insurance claims, and medical reports. Also, with easy access to data, doctors and physicians find it easy to make better clinical decisions.
  • Regulatory Compliance
    Unlike other industries, healthcare industries are also regulated by strict laws. Therefore, maintaining data security and sensitive information is a must to scale any sector. Also, it’s tough to maintain compliance during internal and external audits with high volume record maintenance. But, an RPA chatbot can easily automate patient data validations, compliance report generation, data security operations, and others. With  RPA in place, all the regulatory processes in healthcare organizations are automatically tracked, recorded, and categorized in a structured format for easy access. That’s how it gets more accessible for the healthcare industry to be always prepared for impromptu audit trails or whenever requested.

Benefits Of Using Automation and AI in EHR

  • Clinical Decision Support
    EHRs are complicated and hard to use and often contribute to clinical burnout. But, with Machine Learning(ML) algorithms, EHR processing principally improves data discovery and extraction. With this flexibility, healthcare professionals get all insights in a shorter period which enable healthcare professionals to provide personalized clinical recommendation and excellent patient care. In addition, it gives EHR processing the capability to adapt the user preferences and improve both clinical outcomes and quality of life.
  • Enhanced Patient Communication
    Communication is the key to success when it comes to providing excellent patient care. RPA bot erases the communication roadblocks by automatically generating emails with keeping medical history in the background. That’s how it offers instant resolution with minimal human intervention. RPA involvement also saves a lot of time prioritizing and categorizing tasks requiring more attention.
  • Reduce Medical Data Error
    Healthcare agents have to review documents manually, from reporting patients’ medical histories to clearing insurance claims. Manual reviewing and updating information leaves the chance for error, but RPA leaves no chance of error and provides accurate information in a shorter time frame. Also, the AI chatbot collects and updates all the information in one integrated system where it is easily accessible by a healthcare professional.

    • Increased Employee Efficiency
      Electronic Health Records offer numerous capabilities to generate a schedule with higher precision and efficiency. AI chatbot can swiftly acquire and schedule appointments independently and notify the workforce. With RPA, healthcare professionals can give up the menial tasks to the bot and focus better on providing excellent patient care.

[Also Read : Solving Challenges in Patient Data Interoperability in EHR and Healthcare Systems]

Future With RPA in EHR Processing

Electronic Health Records(EHR) have the potential to change the landscape of the healthcare industry. The benefits that come from the EHR automation and its integration with RPA are immense. By streamlining and optimizing EHR processes, automation offers high efficiency and offers better clinical decision support. With EHRs automation, you get better control over your data and migrate data easily. And its high time to leap forward in embracing this digital transformation to meet patient requirements and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

Ready to automate EHR processing in your organization? AutomationEdge is on a mission to help the organization streamline its business operations with advanced technologies like AI, and RPA. Request a demo here or visit www.automationedge.com to know more about how these technologies can help you step up your IT operations.

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