Nearly Two-Thirds of Hospitals to Implement Automation in Next Two Years

Hospital Leaders Increasingly Focused on Operational Inefficiency

The cost of care continues to rise across the country and healthcare decision-makers are evaluating how technology can enhance operational efficiency and care delivery. Hospital and healthcare systems’ administrative employees are on the front lines of handling large volumes of siloed data, creating a backlog of work that impacts patients, clinicians and payers.

Robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies ease operational burdens and safeguard against employee burnout — for that reason, they are being implemented across the care continuum. A 2019 survey of healthcare decision-makers at two leading industry conferences found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents intended to implement automation technology within the next two years.

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The data conveys further growth of a trend identified in last year’s research collected by Sage Growth Partners, which showed half of hospital leaders planning to invest in AI and RPA. Compiled by Olive, at the 2019 HLTH and Becker’s Revenue Cycle conferences, the data also found that hospital leaders view automation as a means to address a wide range of issues, from operational redundancies to freeing up staffing resources to handle mission-critical tasks.

Other notable survey findings include:

• As the desire to implement automation grows, so too does the awareness of vendors in the industry that are equipped to scale automation solutions — half of respondents would rely on an automation vendor to build, deliver, monitor and support automation within their organization.
• Only 8% of respondents with the job title of Director, and 16% with the job title of Manager, were unfamiliar with the concept of process automation — illustrating that awareness of automation’s impact goes hand-in-hand with implementation.

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“Health systems nationwide are rapidly adopting an AI workforce to deliver enterprise-wide transformation,” Sean Lane, CEO of Olive said. “Healthcare leaders understand that it’s critical to act now. Deploying an AI workforce a solution that’s far beyond simple static automation– is the only way to sustainably address healthcare’s biggest challenges.”

The survey respondents included 89 executives spanning the roles of chief medical information officers, IT directors and managers, revenue cycle managers and data analysis leaders at hospital systems and independent hospitals in the United States. Olive surveyed attendees in the healthcare space at Becker’s Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference and HLTH, two major conferences for healthcare IT leaders and decision-makers.

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