How much time do you spend on administrative tasks as a healthcare professional? A recent MedScape study revealed that, on average, doctors spend more than 15 hours each week on paperwork. Of course, some paperwork is necessary. But with more than a quarter of their time spent dealing with administrative tasks, it begs the question: What if medical professionals could spend much of that time providing direct patient care instead?
In the healthcare industry, providing high-quality patient care is of the utmost importance. Ensuring that patients receive the best care possible requires efficient and accurate document management. By streamlining document processes, unfortunately, many healthcare organizations still rely on manual processes for preparing and delivering patient documents, leading to delays, errors, and increased labor costs.
Below, we’ll explore how automating patient document preparation and delivery can improve patient care while providing efficiency and cost savings.
What is document automation?
Document automation is about as simple as it sounds: it automates the process of producing various documents on a large scale. It’s the design of systems and workflows that assist in creating electronic documents. Healthcare organizations can utilize document automation solutions to create complex documents to reduce the human effort, time, and costs involved.
By automating repetitive, paper-based processes, you can focus on servicing your patients and clients faster and with improved accuracy. Document automation enables you to process documents more securely, efficiently, and frequently. It eliminates the disruption to the office staff that takes them away from higher-value tasks and ultimately increases employee engagement and satisfaction, not to mention time savings. All of these benefits can be tracked across the organization.
The benefits of document automation for healthcare organizations
Document automation has a wide range of applications since it can assist any business that needs transaction-based documents or paperwork. Document automation is used in a variety of sectors, including legal, real estate, manufacturing, and government to name a few. Any organization that depends on paperwork, like contracts, hiring documents, legal documents, financial forms, or healthcare forms, can automate its paperwork and processes.
In healthcare specifically, document automation provides numerous benefits for healthcare providers on the front lines and in the back office – it allows them to focus on one of the primary aspects of healthcare: patient care.
1. Reduce human error
There’s no substitute for the human touch in a healthcare facility. But minimizing the human element in other operational areas can reduce the risks of errors and improve treatment. Canadian physicians follow a single set of rules, but U.S. doctors grapple with different sets of regulations, procedures, requirements, formularies and forms mandated by each health insurance plan or payer. Healthcare organizations can serve larger communities or regions with technology that links various systems together, automatically suggesting which locations have available appointments to get patients the care they need sooner.
2. Create efficiency and save time
While many healthcare facilities leverage technology, there is a surprising number that still uses paper-based systems. Admission forms, faxes, and questionnaires are some examples. Ensuring these documents get entered into an electronic system in a timely manner often depends on manually keying in the information into various fields. Certain repeatable business processes and routing procedures like those in accounts payable, supply orders, HR onboarding and others can be standardized. This helps to reduce redundancies and having to start a process from scratch every time. Digital insurance claims and billing help to mitigate the back-and-forth when processing claims. Even within healthcare, time is money, and improved efficiencies, less overtime and greater employee satisfaction lead to cost savings. Reduced errors also translate to fewer payouts due to medical errors. Automation allows everyone on a team to accomplish more during their shifts.
3. Improve HIPAA compliance
In addition to their care, patient confidentiality is a top priority. Effective ECM technology in combination with other automated systems can mitigate the risks of cyberattacks or unauthorized access to medical records. Even a facility’s printer fleet can help automate processes and ensure the secure transfer of data.
For example, print management software automatically enforces compliant print behaviors with pull printing, badge readers or PIN entries. Multifunction printers can securely scan and digitize paperwork and route it to the proper person or location in an ECM or other system.
Manual document management in healthcare can lead to numerous problems. One of the biggest issues is the amount of time it takes to prepare and deliver documents. Staff members can spend hours each day manually sorting, addressing, and mailing documents, which not only takes time away from patient care, but also increases the risk of potential mistakes. For example, there is the perpetual risk of human error like addressing the document to the wrong patient or including incorrect information. Another problem with manual document management is that it can be costly. Not only does it require additional staff members to handle the workload, but it also leads to increased postage costs. In many cases, organizations are paying more for postage than they need to because they are not taking advantage of bulk mailing rates or other cost-saving options. It is also important to get a solution that is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant. HIPAA is a federal law that mandates certain standards for the privacy and security of individuals’ protected health information (PHI). The purpose of HIPAA is to protect the confidentiality of patient’s medical information and prevent the unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of such information. When healthcare organizations do not use a HIPAA-compliant automation solution, they can put the privacy and security of their patients at risk, while also increasing the risk of data breaches or other security incidents that could lead to potential legal liability and reputational damage.
How can my organization start implementing document automation?
Transitioning your healthcare organization from paper-based to automated document processing drives greater efficiency, improves employee productivity, and frees healthcare professionals to focus on patients and positive outcomes. Intelligent document automation reduces the risk of errors that could impact the patient experience, their health, and the practice’s cash flow.
Modern document automation software for healthcare like Quadient’s Impress platform can automate your entire patient communication workflow and allow you to send critical communications through multiple delivery channels – print, digital, or outsourced.
Print: Consolidate mail from your desktop and send to your centralized mail production facility from anywhere
Digital: Send communications digitally through a secure, branded document portal
Outsource: Print, sort, stuff, meter, and mail without leaving your desk through an outsourced hybrid mail solution
Look for a solution that is designed to meet the needs of healthcare organizations which require the ability to support both legacy systems and processes. A solution that gives healthcare organizations the agility to respond and adapt quickly to customer, regulatory and business demands.
If you’re rethinking how you manage and send critical customer communications and are ready to make a move to automate your document workflows, book a demo with us today.
