Remember when multitasking used to be easy, carefree, and doable? Yeah, me neither, but it’s nice to dream, right?

Healthcare providers and administrators are expected to deliver excellent patient experiences while keeping up with administrative tasks, records handling, and compliance without mistakes.

However, inaccurate patient information can cost a U.S. health system  $ 6 billion a year to correct for denied claims.

2022 was the worst year financially for healthcare since COVID-19; according to Kaufman Hall, around half of U.S. hospitals finished in the negative margins for the year. Hospitals and health systems need to make investments that reduce labor expenses, cut time for providers, and grow the bottom line.

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) uses AI-led document processing, machine learning, and human validation to eliminate patient information errors automatically. This removes the need for doctors, nurses, and care teams to manually index data so that they can focus on patient care.

| Here are three ways healthcare systems are taking advantage of IDP right now.

Advantage 1: They’re preventing mistakes in patient data capture

Imagine a process that could automatically and accurately index ambulatory documents like diagnoses, medical history, medications, physical examinations, and test results.

In this survey of 13,000 patients, one in five who read a medical note reported finding a mistake, and 40% perceived the error as serious.

Medical forms can vary, making it difficult and time-consuming for care teams to index them manually, leading to data errors. IDP validates patient information against the database by using artificial intelligence and machine learning to study past data. Quickly extract and structure the essential fields to be searchable and accessible in your electronic health record (EHR) or an enterprise content management system (ECM).

For example, IDP could automatically pull crucial data points like first name, last name, date of birth, or date of service. Then, IDP fact-checks against an existing database of health records to prevent mistakes in patient data capture.

IDP is precise upon initial intake, which helps your care teams feel confident knowing the answers they need regarding their patients in the data they see.

Advantage 2: They’re improving data accessibility across health systems

Care teams and patients need immediate access to patient data, as do care partners within the health system – such as Scheduling, HR, Accounting, and Billing.

IDP makes healthcare records accessible using AI and machine learning to capture, classify, and store patient charts within your ECM or EHR.

When IDP functions properly and healthcare records are accurately and automatically placed in a health system’s ECM, multiple departments can access for faster processes all around an organization.

The need for data accessibility access also includes patients. Under HIPAA, patients have the right to access their health information. According to a recent survey, 60% of healthcare consumers have insufficient patient data access.

As recently as Oct. 6, 2022, federal law states that healthcare organizations must now give patients access to their medical record data in a digital format. IDP allows for better medical records management access while improving decision-making at critical moments to better serve your patients.

Advantage 3: They’re reducing operational costs associated with manual indexing

Each physician needs an average of 4.3 full-time support staff to handle back-office paperwork.

With IDP and human validation, it removes the mundane data entry and document filing so those support staff can focus on more valuable work duties.

Imagine you have an admin clerk who costs $40,000 a year and indexes documents as they come in; there are so many incoming forms and records that the clerk can’t keep up with the load. So now a nurse practitioner, who costs about $140,000 a year, is also helping.

Because both the nurse practitioner and the admin clerk are overwhelmed with paperwork, the doctor, who costs $250,000 a year, has to jump in and spend two hours a day helping out. You now have three individuals working on paperwork rather than working together efficiently to serve patients. If you have 4.3 full-time admin clerks at $40,000 a year, that’s about $172,000 a year for a job that could be automated with IDP.

Now imagine only needing one admin clerk at $45,000 a year to help keep the paperwork flowing and using that other $127,000 to invest back in care offerings, office updates, salaries, or other investments.

Accurate patient information also ensures you’ll be able to get paid faster.

Conclusion

Our IDP solution, AI-Powered Document Processing, can help your ambulatory facilities integrate with your healthcare system, streamline patient information, and make it immediately accessible within your EMR or ECM. AI-Powered Document Processing allows you to focus on revenue generation, so your providers can go back to patient care and leave the administrative tasks, records handling to us.