The 1-2-3 Guide to Workflow Automation for Healthcare and Surgery

A doctor uses workflow automation for healthcare

One innovative technology, two key concepts, three major benefits: discover how to transform your practice with workflow automation for healthcare and surgery.

Healthcare workflow automation is a powerful tool. It offers cost savings, improved communication, and lower rates of clinician burnout, all built on a foundation of accessibility and patient-centered care. In fact, through workflow automation, the U.S. healthcare industry stands to save $16.3 billion annually. By adding automation to your resources, you can equip your practice for ongoing success and growth.

Fortunately, implementing workflow automation in your practice can be as easy as 1-2-3.

Key Takeaways

  • Workflow automation for healthcare and surgery has the power to increase efficiency throughout your practice.
  • Automation supports a more accessible, patient-centered model of healthcare for improved health outcomes.
  • The wide-reaching benefits of workflow automation include lowering clinician burnout, reducing costs, and improving interoperability.

1. Innovative Technology

Across the healthcare industry, workflow automation is changing how we manage our practices.

Automation is a powerful tool that increases efficiency and reduces errors without the addition of staff. Healthcare workflow automation involves leveraging smart technology to handle non-medical tasks automatically rather than manually. This automation is especially valuable for repetitive administrative tasks and can transform human error and inconsistency into an almost negligible factor.

Healthcare and surgical tasks that are especially suited for automation include:

  • Patient onboarding
  • Inputting medical history data
  • Delivering appointment reminders
  • Generating bills
  • Processing payments
  • Booking appointments
  • Managing claims digitally
  • Providing answers to basic inquiries such as practice location
  • Locating pertinent information such as patient charts
  • Generating data and pattern insights
  • Monitoring resources
  • Distributing digital and social media marketing materials

2. Key Concepts

A patient-centered approach and making healthcare accessible to more people are two of the most important issues facing the modern healthcare industry and the fundamental concepts behind the design of healthcare workflow automation technology.

Supporting Patient-Centered Healthcare

The movement towards patient-centered care is fundamental to modern practices and is a key concept behind healthcare workflow automation technology.

The patient-centered model aims to create an individualized healthcare journey that respects patient choices and allows value to guide clinical decisions. Patient-centric care builds a collaborative relationship between patients and providers, emphasizing patient enablement and engagement for the best possible health outcomes. Workflow automation supports this by connecting patients and clinicians and providing a seamless patient journey.

Workflow automation in healthcare and surgery is a patient-centered tool because it:

  • Frees clinician time to be spent with patients by automating repetitive, administrative tasks
  • Aids in individualizing healthcare plans by creating a central, readily accessible resource for each patient’s electronic health record (EHR) including medical history and appointment notes
  • Empowers patient participation in their own care by providing convenient methods of communication including secure messaging
  • Delivers information, education, and reminders at the best time for each patient and makes it available on their schedule
Picker’s eight principles of patient-centered care
Source httpswwwturvillebaycomradiation oncologypure patient care

Making Healthcare Accessible

Equity is one of the six fundamental dimensions of quality healthcare. Making healthcare and surgery more accessible to more people is not only ethical practice but can improve your patient acquisition and retention and help your surgery grow.

Workflow automation facilitates improved accessibility by allowing patients to complete a wide range of tasks online, including:

  • Scheduling, rescheduling, and canceling appointments
  • Completing paperwork
  • Submitting their medical history
  • Asking non-urgent questions
  • Accessing surgical education
  • Completing pre-operative prep 
  • Accessing test results and appointment notes
  • Paying bills

Providing these resources online enables patients to:

  • Utilize accessibility technologies such as text readers and translation tools
  • Complete documents on their own schedule
  • Use the device most convenient for them
  • Spend less time on the phone and in waiting rooms

Source: https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/02/the-dawn-of-digital-medicine

Consumers are increasingly turning to the convenience of online services in healthcare
Source httpswwweconomistcombusiness20201202the dawn of digital medicine

3. Major Benefits

From the key concepts discussed above, the benefits of healthcare workflow automation should already be evident. Patients, care providers, and payers all see significant improvements from the implementation of workflow automation. Some of the key benefits include:

  • reducing staff burnout
  • lowering costs
  • improving internal communication

Reduce Staff Burn-Out

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated an existing burnout crisis among healthcare professionals. Fifty-five percent of frontline workers are currently reporting feeling burnt out. This mental and physical exhaustion brought on by chronic workplace stress results in depression, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, frequent headaches and stomach aches, and increased use of drugs and alcohol.

Workflow automation is a powerful tool to help tackle this issue by automating time-consuming processes, reducing the workload of each clinician, and helping your practice reduce turnover. When the staff is less burdened by administrative tasks like data input and manual scheduling, they can spend a higher percentage of their time face-to-face with patients, increasing their job satisfaction, and decreasing stress.

Lower Costs

In the U.S. where we spend $4.1 trillion on healthcare annually, affordability is a significant and pressing challenge. Workflow automation offers a way to reduce costs for patients and providers alike while expanding accessibility across a range of services.

Automation reduces costs by:

  • Automating time-consuming tasks such as medical history input and phone-based appointment scheduling 
  • Streamlining the entire patient journey, costly missed appointments, and surgery cancellations 
  • Sharing information more readily between providers, minimizing unnecessary and wasteful repetition of tests
  • Reducing claim denials due to human error

Improve Internal Communication

Effective communication between clinicians and facilities is essential for a smooth patient journey and quality health outcomes. Communication breakdowns like inaccessible patient records cause redundancies and delays in care that can worsen medical outcomes, cause poor health outcomes, lower patient satisfaction, and negatively impact your practice’s reputation.

By creating centralized, easily accessible, and shareable patient records and healthcare data, workflow automation drastically improves interoperability and improves efficiency throughout your practice.

How to Implement Workflow Automation for Your Healthcare and Surgery Practice

Implementing workflow automation is easy with Wellbe’s ConnectedCare. Our flexible guided automation solutions are designed to fit seamlessly with your practice and support the entire patient journey. Let us automate hundreds of non-medical administrative tasks to create a streamlined workflow and optimized patient journey, helping you to deliver accessible, patient-centered care with exceptional outcomes.

Find out how Wellbe can tip the scales in your favor today.