The number of patients visiting the
Singapore General Hospital (SGH) Orthopaedic Diagnostic Centre (ODC) has been increasing annually, stretching manpower resources. As such, the SGH ODC team explored solutions to free up some of their time spent on completing manual and repetitive processes, such as patient billing.
Introducing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to the patient billing process has resulted in significant time savings as compared to the previous manual patient billing process whereby a staff had to perform multiple checks and data entry to numerous fields in the billing system.
"Using RPA to do billing frees us up to do the more meaningful work such as collating and analysing PROMs, which improves care for our patients," says Karen.
SGH ODC is an assessment centre that collates Patient Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMs), patients’ self-assessment questionnaire on their health, and Performance Based Measures (PBMs) for orthopaedic patients. The specialised ODC team conducts pre- and post-operative assessments of patients, as an independent objective evaluation of the patients' functional progress and ability to return to daily function after orthopaedic surgery.
ODC believes in measuring outcomes that matter most to patients to better understand how to improve their quality of life. ODC is possibly the only dedicated centre in Asia that monitors surgical outcomes, and systematically records the clinical performance and function of patients following surgery. The information collected in ODC has been useful for improvement in clinical care, and research and development.
Exploring possibilities and benefits with RPA
Karen (middle row, second from right) is grateful for the support of the team at ODC, especially ODC Senior Patient Service Associate, Tai Li Yan (bottom row, first from right), without which the implementation of RPA at the centre could not be accomplished. Photo credit: Orthopaedic Diagnostic Centre, Singapore General Hospital
With the new, enhanced operational workflow developed by Karen Zhang, a Manager at ODC, the:
- previous manual process of extracting billing services from the Access Database has now been automated
- searches for patients to be billed on SAP, the billing platform used at ODC, and the processing of billing based on services have also been automated
- introduction of RPA enabled the billing system to notify ODC staff when the billing is complete
Image Credit: Artificial Intelligence & Automation, Future Health System, Singapore General Hospital
She adds, “With the success of implementing RPA to ODC patient billing, and now that our team is familiar with RPA, we’re looking at implementing RPA to other routine repetitive tasks at ODC as part of our future plan. Another resource-intensive process is the scheduling of patient appointments with ODC. Our team believes that applying RPA to this will benefit our team and the centre.”
How can RPA augment my work?
RPA automates workflows, reduces turnaround time, allows us to do more, and increases employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity by completing mundane and repetitive tasks on our to-do lists.
RPA interacts with applications and systems via the user interface, and can be implemented fairly quickly to accelerate digital transformation. It's especially useful with processes that involve working on different siloed systems that are not integrated with each other.
Karen is keen to acknowledge Chan Wai Ching, Natalia Fernandez Heng and Iffat Bin Mohamad Rafi from the Artificial Intelligence & Automation (AIA) team under the Department of Future Health System for their role in the RPA implementation for ODC, “Achieving this was only possible with their crucial support and guidance.”
Dare to explore!
SGH healthcare and administrative professionals who are keen to find better ways to do work with RPA and learn new tech skills can apply for the RPA Training Programme which equips participants with the necessary skills to be a proficient RPA Citizen Developer.
Contact Wai Ching, our SGH RPA lead with the AIA team, at [email protected] to find out more!