Massive Savings Through Workflow Automation
Friday, April 29, 2022
Challenge
Sound Physicians’ Advisory Services division was bogged down with manual and redundant processes. As a part of serving their clients, operations workers transferred a vast amount of documents across multiple systems day-in and day-out.
This process involved periodically checking clunky EMR systems for new entries, transferring data to the case management portal (digital “swivel-chairing”), regularly checking for updates, and, once complete, transferring the final review determination from the portal back to the clunky EMR system.
The most significant pain point of this workflow was the lack of notifications — operations staff did not know when a new work item was available, and they didn’t know when a physician advisor completed the case review. The problem was exacerbated by keeping track of multiple work items at once. On top of this, the monotony of copying/pasting info from one system to another left room for human error.
“Healthcare is ever changing. Thanks to our established and positive relationship with Macedon, we’re able to work in real time to get processes
updated. As a result, there’s no disruption in our business operations, which brings great peace of mind.”
—VP of Operations, Advisory Services
Solution
Through the UiPath framework, Macedon Technologies created an automation that iterates through the EMR work queue on a FIFO basis and continually refreshes the queue for any new items to appear. The automation intelligently determines the action to take on a work item, whether entering a new case into the case management portal or completing the work item once the case is completed.
Since case information is obtained in predictable locations in the EMR, the automated robot can reliably copy the data over. When creating new cases, the robot makes an API request, which is much more efficient than going through the portal’s front end. Even without EMR and case management portal notifications, the bot’s continuous cycling through the work queue and checking case status offers quick time-to-action for work items.
Result
The vast majority of cases are now being created automatically by the robots, increasing the value Sound Physicians provides to its clients with high accuracy and turnaround times. The operations team members can now shift their focus away from repetitive case entries toward more meaningful tasks. The efficiency of resources offered by automation has enabled Sound’s advisory services team to scale its operations. Additionally, they have seen a savings of over 250 hours per week through automation.
The resource efficiency offered by their initial EMR automation has enabled Sound Physicians to scale their operations. The increase in accuracy and efficiency has created a new marketing approach for Sound, enabling them to partner with new hospital clients and health networks with the intent of ultimately automating case management for several new systems.
From inefficient and error-prone to automated and accurate
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