Healthcare Automation Solutions: Key Opportunities for Patients and Providers

Healthcare organizations are evolving to improve patient care by offering better experiences to patients, providers, and administrative staff. While the first things that come to mind might include empathetic care and clear communication, more organizations are investing in automation to deliver those stronger end results.

Healthcare automation solutions are helping healthcare staff reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, optimize operational efficiency, and improve decision-making through dedicated solutions increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities. And it’s working — it’s helping healthcare staff dedicate more time to those in their care, which can directly improve the patient experience.

In this post, we’re going to talk about everything organizations need to know about healthcare automation, including how to use it and the different types of technology that can be most beneficial.

What Is Healthcare Automation?

Healthcare automation is the use of digital tools and intelligent systems to streamline manual work, repetitive tasks, or complex processes in both clinical and non-clinical settings. Let’s look at a few examples of technology that healthcare organizations are already using today.

Robotic process automation

Robotic process automation (RPA) uses software bots to handle repetitive, rule-based tasks that humans were previously responsible for. In healthcare organizations, this may include data entry, billing, and claims processing.

AI chatbots and virtual assistants

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are always-on tools that assist patients with frequently asked questions (FAQs), appointment scheduling, or post-care follow-up.

Some healthcare organizations may be reluctant to leverage chatbots or virtual assistants, but you can program them to only answer certain types of questions.

You can set up a customer support chatbot to answer questions about hospital parking or billing processes, for example, but prevent the chatbot from addressing medical questions beyond recommending the individual contact their physician or providing a copy of their post-care instructions.

Predictive analytics and sentiment analysis

There are tools now that can help providers and organizations alike identify potentially high-risk situations that need addressing quickly. There’s technology that can flag high-risk patients who need immediate attention based on the messages they’re leaving or that can flag negative feedback that needs organizational attention in real time.

Automated patient communication

Patient communication can be incredibly time-consuming, but automated patient communication tools are changing the game. Now, technology can make calls and send texts with appointment reminders, lab results alerts, post-discharge surveys, and more. This can actually help reduce patient no-shows, alleviate anxiety for worried patients, and increase post-care feedback.

The goal here isn’t to replace the human touch. You aren’t sending out lab results and letting patients figure out the details on their own, for example, but you’re allowing them to have access to the information as quickly as possible. Automated systems give your staff more time to address important patient needs by reducing administrative burdens for healthcare providers.

Top Automation Opportunities in Healthcare

There are certain healthcare processes that can benefit immensely from intelligent automation technologies, which can reduce human error, streamline tasks, and provide operational cost savings. All of this can ultimately improve patient outcomes through better care.

Let’s look at the top opportunities for automation.

1. Streamlined appointment scheduling

Manual scheduling often leads to long hold times, which can result in missed appointments, frustrated or lost patients, and inefficient resource use.

Automation can enable:

• Self-service portals and interactive voice response (IVR) systems that can help patients book, reschedule, or cancel appointments without any staff intervention
• AI-based routing that matches patients with the right provider based on their availability, their specialization, and the patient information provided on the call
• Real-time calendar integrations across teams and facilities, which can prevent double-booking and improve visibility into full appointment availability

2. Automated follow-ups and patient engagement

Care doesn’t end after the patient walks out of the appointment. Ongoing follow-up and patient engagement are essential to help patients comply with their treatment plans, come back for check-ups, and monitor their progress.

Automating follow-ups ensures continuity, reduces re-admissions, and boosts satisfaction. Here’s how you can leverage customer experience automation in healthcare systems:

• Post-visit check-ins via SMS or email, based on the patient’s preference
• Medication reminders, including prescription refill reminders, so there’s no lapse in treatment
• Automated feedback surveys to collect valuable data
• Re-care campaigns for overdue checkups, increasing patient bookings and compliance
• Referral management, which can help patients connect with other specialized clinicians

These workflows can be run from a HIPAA-compliant contact center platform like Nextiva, offering proactive outreach at scale.

3. Virtual assistants for FAQs and intake

Patients don’t want to call — and likely wait on hold — for every simple request. Virtual agents and chatbots can automate and streamline processes, such as:

• Insurance verification and changes
• Information about the office location, fax number, and hours of operation
• Pre-appointment screening questions
• Symptom checkers or prescreening intake for healthcare services

In many cases, patients can complete essential, time-consuming tasks online before they arrive at the office. This is easier on everyone and may even help your office keep appointments running on time.

4. Automated claims and medical billing processes

Financial interactions can easily be the most frustrating part of the patient journey, even when organizations are using dedicated revenue cycle management to manage billing and payment. Automation helps simplify tasks like the following:

• Insurance claims processing and follow-ups
• Payment reminders and processing
• E-statement delivery through email or healthcare portals like MyChart
• Eligibility checks and prior authorization, which may help reduce denials

This improves transparency, reduces paperwork errors, and speeds up reimbursements without increasing headcount, and can reduce patient frustration, too.

5. Real-time communication and alerts

Poor communication can not only frustrate patients — it can actually result in poorer patient outcomes. Automated alerts can help keep both patients and providers informed. Examples of real-time communication and alerts include:

• Lab results notifications for both patients and providers
• Bed availability alerts for staff allocating patient demand
• Discharge status updates for patients
• High-risk patient flags that need to be addressed immediately

Healthcare professionals can use this information to help make diagnostic processes and treatment plans more efficient, and patients can access their own information immediately. Few things are more stressful than waiting to hear about an urgent scan, so improved communication and alerts can be helpful.

Remember to rely on software and healthcare call centers that prioritize regulatory compliance with HIPAA and other essential security guidelines.

👌 Case Study: How Nextiva Changed the Game for Concordia Care

Ways for Providers to Use Automation

If you’re unsure where to begin implementing automation in your practice, let’s discuss three strong use cases that can be good starting points.

1. RPA for backend admin tasks

RPA bots can handle tasks like:

• Updating patient data through their electronic health record across systems, ensuring complete records and preventing data silos
• Processing reimbursements from government programs, insurance companies, and patient payments
• Credentialing staff, including verification of experience, licensure, and qualifications
• Filing compliance documentation for multiple healthcare regulations

RPA bots alone can shave off hours of manual data entry from your team’s daily workflows. This increases efficiency significantly and can prevent human errors.

2. Quality monitoring and analytics

Speech analytics tools can now review all of your recorded calls to identify things like:

• Common patient complaints and trends in negative feedback
• Potential compliance risks
• Performance gaps among individual agents or teams
• Patient call sentiment changes over time

Nextiva’s AI-powered contact center, for example, offers real-time feedback and QA scoring across all channels. You can identify potential patient experience concerns in real time and track the impact of training initiatives over time.

3. Resource and inventory management

Automation tools can help with complex tasks like forecasting demand, tracking supplies, and triggering reorders. They can be essential assets for resource management and can even be effective at preventing supply chain shortages, helping you manage fluctuating capacity during events like flu season or a public health crisis.

Why Contact Centers Are Core to Healthcare Automation

Medical call centers can be a valuable asset to healthcare organizations, especially since they typically make regular use of automation and AI-powered tools. In many cases, they’re at the forefront of healthcare CX innovation.

They offer a few distinct benefits to keep in mind:

• Improve patient satisfaction: Contact centers can reduce patient wait times and eliminate communication silos, which can directly increase patient satisfaction.
• Facilitate data-driven decision-making: By capturing every interaction and turning it into insight, you can make more informed decisions to improve patient care.
• Boost employee efficiency: Contact center automation can streamline routine work, allowing teams to focus on care instead of manual, time-consuming tasks.
• Offer omnichannel accessibility: By supporting voice, SMS, email, video, and chat, you create a single, unified experience for customers and staff alike.

Nextiva: Your Partner for Healthcare Automation

Nextiva is a fully integrated contact center platform for healthcare organizations. Some of its most valuable features include:

• AI-powered IVR and chatbots, which are capable of handling routine inquiries and directing more complex questions to the right person
• Automated reminders, alerts, and survey campaigns to increase patient engagement, reduce no-shows, and collect feedback
• Speech and sentiment analysis data, which is valuable for QA, can identify potential problems that need to be addressed and create individual or group training opportunities
• Omnichannel patient communication across voice, text, and chat for a seamless patient experience
• Detection of high-risk patients who need immediate care

These use cases can all directly impact your patient experience.

OnTrak Health, for example, used Nextiva for features like smart routing, SMS analysis, and automated omnichannel campaigns. They successfully increased patient enrollment, identified patients at risk for self-harm, and more efficiently optimized patient load across over 300 different clinicians.

Whether you’re a small practice looking to automate appointment reminders or a large health system managing call volume across facilities, Nextiva gives you the tools to reduce complexity and elevate care in a scalable way.

Ready to learn more? Check out Nextiva’s healthcare solution to get started. 👇