How Automated Document Processing Improves Clinical Care, Operating Costs

April 05, 2021 - In today's digital world, the volume and complexity of physical document exchange in healthcare is surprising. Shrinking reimbursement and increasing choices for healthcare consumers requires healthcare organizations to look internally at the processes and procedures that lead to inefficiencies which can adversely impact patient care, as well as operating costs.

For providers, paper-based communication can neither support high-quality care delivery in the near term nor provide the foundation for clinical innovation in the long term. What's more, the approach has consequences for interactions with payers and patients. While the exchange of paper documents has played a significant role in care coordination historically, new forms of technology, such as automated document processing, hold the key to improving the healthcare experience for patients and providers today and tomorrow.

Physical document exchange has presented a host of problems for healthcare organizations, large and small. There are fundamental concerns associated with the exchange of paper documents, like compliance and proper handling, but in a complex clinical setting, document-based challenges become more complex as well.

Three major challenges stand out to Shawn Brockman, RN, MBA, practicing nurse and Concord Technologies Director of Health Strategy and Applications.

The first challenge stems from human error.

"From a basic clinical data perspective, the idea of transcribing or copying findings from paper to the patient system of record is historically problematic, to say the least," Brockman says. "Every time a human has to copy information from one place to the next, there's a chance for error. At best, such an error is a less severe but costly administrative nuisance; at worst, it could be acute and dangerous to a patient."

The second major challenge is paper-based processing's inability to highlight important information to clinicians who otherwise are responsible for parsing through numerous pages of documentation for critical data points.

"Urgency is fairly well understood when you're face-to-face in front of someone," says Brockman. "But in the instance of clinical documentation, the pervasiveness of information overload means the receiver is having to read several pages of a document before even understanding the gist of the message. Couple that with the omission of important details, and it becomes an obvious pitfall."

Providers already find themselves short of time, with many on the brink of burnout. Adding more administrative burden raises the risk that critical information could be missed.

The third challenge can also have the most severe long-term implications: Paper-based communication simply does not lend itself to becoming part of a body of data for innovators in clinical care to leverage moving forward. This means that the industry is missing out on a significant opportunity to inform population health management in the future.

"Imagine a whole silo of information that's not available for data aggregation, analysis, formulation of insights for better care, or better outcomes for the patient. These silos prevent the further extrapolation that is necessary for improved population health management," adds Brockman.

However, to mitigate these challenges, today's healthcare organizations — health systems, hospitals, and physician practices — have access to technology solutions that can eliminate challenges and provide immediate and long-term benefits to patients and providers. When patients transition from one care setting to the next, the ability of information to move efficiently and securely from provider to provider plays a significant role in determining the appropriateness and quality of the care to be delivered.

"There's a great deal of administrative and patient information that needs to be communicated from provider to provider," Brockman continues. "In many cases, this communication — what we're sending, receiving, and facilitating — is sometimes the very first touch of the patient by clinicians. If we can promote a better time to decision, especially in competitive markets where receiving and processing care coordination data before your competition means the difference in sustainable census, that faster time to decision leads to increased revenue and baseline margins to keep a facility afloat."

On the administrative side, automated document processing eliminates both mistakes and the need for manual intervention, a significant cost overhead for healthcare practices of all sizes.

"There is a significant expense related to human processing of data and documentation," Brockman affirms. "Automated data extraction and workflow can reduce human touch and the time and cost associated with human intervention. I have seen this both in my clinical experience and working directly with our payer and provider customers. "

By moving away from paper-based communication and processing, healthcare organizations can avoid mistakes with financial implications.

"An inappropriate referral and a decision to admit a patient that can't be cared for effectively is costly to the organization and the patient," Brockman warns. "In fact, the organization could end up footing the bill for that first couple of hours or that first day of care and even pay a penalty for a readmission back to the hospital. More effective processing and communication mean a shortening of the time it takes for patients to receive the care they need."

And most importantly, automated document processing frees clinicians to focus on patients and positive outcomes.

"Time to decision is important, but time to care is of importance as well. The faster care is actually provided, the shorter the length of stay. It's better for the organization, the payer, and the patient who gets to go home on time," adds Brockman.

What's more, the elimination of paper-based communication and processing paves the way for healthcare organizations to grow in their use and management of data moving forward.

"As our capabilities for data extraction classification and workflow management have expanded, there's a natural progression toward expanding our ability to meet the demands of increasingly complex workflows and user needs," Brockman asserts. "We've begun to discover new ways to not only manage and promote efficient, effective workflows but also start to capture and aggregate the data that we're seeing coming across our systems. Now, we can begin to tap into the potential of all the data available in the healthcare record."

Care moves at the speed of data, and automated document processing has the potential to turn information into action quickly and effectively. Clinically, providers are able to make informed decisions at the point of care and speed a patient's time to recover. Administratively, human resources can be reduced or redirected to improve productivity, impacting an organization's bottom line. Lastly, digitizing information allows for the aggregation and analysis of data that benefits for individual patients and patient populations, leading to improved provider and patient satisfaction across the board.

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Concord is leading the development of new Artificial Intelligence technologies to extract data from documents and ease the burden of managing fax communications. With our 97% customer retention rate and delivery reliability that is unparalleled in the industry, Concord is committed to being the partner you can trust with your data.