Robocorp partner implements healthcare automation solution

One of robotic process automation’s (RPA’s) most attractive value propositions to both agile growing businesses and established enterprises is without a doubt the ability to reduce time-consuming tasks, while essentially eliminating human error. 

Complex Healthcare Revenue Cycle

Thoughtful Automation, a Robocorp partner, put this promise to the ultimate test when they decided to comprehensively automate the entire revenue cycle function for a behavioral healthcare provider client. Up until this point, this provider’s revenue cycle department performed the following 4 steps, using entirely human labor:

• Step 1: Processing primary and secondary claims
• Step 2: Applying patient responsibility
• Step 3: Processing and sending invoices
• Step 4: Reconciling zero payments 

This component of their business model presented several issues for the company, namely: 

• An ever-present backlog of invoices and claims 
• Difficulties scaling (as invoices increased, so did the number of workers needed to be hired)
• Opportunities for human error (disjointed, differing sets of documentation and credentials needed at every stage slowed productivity and triggered mistakes)

The Solution: Healthcare Automation

In order to automate (and subsequently save business time and capital), TA decided to organize and deploy a successful automation suite, founded on the use of Robocorp’s open-source RPA technology.

As a result, Thoughtful Automation designed 5 robotic workers to streamline the revenue cycle process, start to finish. These robots interact within and across applications, automating time-consuming acts such as data collection, inputs, client tracking, and so on. In this case, the systems automated include Central Reach, Waystar, and Microsoft Office 365. 

Healthcare RPA in Action

To exemplify, let’s quickly explore how the robots streamline work in Step 1 of the revenue cycle function: when processing primary and secondary claims, the bot automatically maps to agreed rates and credentialed providers documents in shared drives. This determines if the providers and rates match the data held in Central Reach. From there, the bot reads the EOB in Waystar and fills all the required information into Waystar from Central Reach, without having to go back and forth (like a human would). This saves time and capital, in addition to eliminating backlogs of unseen claims, since this bot works 24/7 to make sure this healthcare providers’ department is up to speed.  

And this is just in step 1 (processing primary and secondary claims) of the revenue cycle. These 5 bots work across all 4 of the above Steps to ensure that tasks such as applied patient responsibility, sent invoices, and reconciled zero payments are all ticked off efficiently, effectively, and accurately. 

Results of Revenue Cycle Automation

Thanks to their speed and sophistication, these bots are able to: 

• Handle 3000 clicks across 3 web-based applications
• Organize 12+ spreadsheets into a coherent, cohesive system
• Work 24/7, 365 days a year

Beyond this immediate streamlining of the revenue cycle function, these bots also allow for human workers’ labor and productivity to be applied to other areas of the business, specifically areas that trigger growth. In this case, for instance, TA’s bots delivered 70% in time savings, with only 30% of this department’s hours needing to be spent on the revenue cycle process. 

Behavioral Healthcare Provider’s Thoughts

The best part? This behavioral healthcare company (and their clients) are extremely happy with the ROI that RPA technology has generated for their business model. The Director of Finance for the organization reports that: 

"We've been thrilled with the product Thoughtful Automation has delivered! Prior to TA, we were always playing "catch up" to process our backlog of items in our revenue cycle. Now we are able to process claims as they come in without having to re-work any errors. TA is a great company to work with and an even better product!"

Robocorp is proud to see our technology being utilized in the healthcare industry! Learn more about how Thoughtful Automation has utilized Robocorp here.

Or you can learn more about automation in healthcare by clicking here.