What’s the best thing to automate and why – should you start with supporting clinicians or administration staff? Do you want to use automation tools to save time, do more, remove errors, or lower costs? All questions are correct, and it’s up to you.
It boils down to what you want to achieve. For example, is it a priority to free clinician time to see more patients and focus on things that need to be looked at by someone medically trained? Or do you desperately need to get more from your administrative team as but can’t as they are too busy?
Would you like to communicate with patients more efficiently and free the time of both admin and clinicians? Is it a win to ensure that when patients come to see you, the reason they are there is clear to prevent “wasted appointments”? Do you or your team loathe doing particular things and want to improve work morale?
Software automation robots / RPA support pretty much everything you do. Think of them as people trained to work in your practice with jobs.
They can support every function and use your systems like you do (keyboard, mouse, login account). The logic is to remove anything that doesn’t require a person to make a decision that can’t be predefined in advance.
For example, you can remove the need to manually check all bloods deemed (clinically) unnecessary to review, only action the ones which require your input. Hand over all your call/recall to a robot; Leave your team to only have to check a report to see who hasn’t replied. Would it be a win to have patients seamlessly register and deregister in record time with minimal team input? What about reducing your time to file by 80%?
The answer is don’t only look at what you can automate 100% of; often, when there’s volume or it’s time-consuming, if you can automate an apportion of the work, leaving you to do the rest, thousands of hours can be saved.
You work in a space where there is a huge volume, and because of advances in technology, you can safely hand over apportions of this work. Make sure you take advantage!
Getting started with automation
If you would like to understand more about how you can get started with automation, contact Jamesa@jifjaff.co.uk, and be sure to join our LinkedIn group and follow our page.