Automation is driving the change in the post-acute care industry. Automation delivers speed and precision while freeing staff to work on more complex, higher value tasks and thus eliminating the repetitive tasks. 

RPA or Robotic Process Automation is a system of recording tasks as a human would. Machines are then instructed to execute these tasks in the exact manner as a human would. Robots (or bots) find logical steps and perform repetitive manual tasks with no human intervention. Several industries including healthcare have begun a widespread adoption of RPA, and the benefits it poses to post-acute care are aplenty. 

With automation, post-acute care providers are able to simplify their daily repetitive work, allowing the robots to manage the repetitive tasks based on a specific set of rules or instructions that are provided. Robots are trained to log on to pre-existing systems on behalf of teams, and follow the instructions to complete tasks. This frees up time from resources to focus on patient care and higher value tasks without the encumbrances of repetitive administrative work. Automating workflows allows post-acute care teams to intervene only when manual intervention is necessary. Most tasks can be handled by automation and since the work occurs at the backend, it does not require supervision or daily direction.

Why security is vital in the workflow automation

Automation Software runs on behalf of users and in the process are required to :

• Applications: Interact with many applications - both source and target.
• Process (execute a set of steps) to meet a functionality
• Rules and logic based execution
• Manage Data - Store, Transfer, Processing and reporting. 

The automation involved in PAC creates several layers such as web, APIs and data exchange that are vulnerable to attacks. The use of RPA frameworks can expose organizations to new types of security threats. Hence, its security is an utmost priority while using workflow automation.

What should be the steps considered to improve the security

A : Use Password Vaults for Managing Credentials

Credentials - both login and password - should be stored in Vault. A Vault typically stores Passwords in encrypted format and prevents direct access to credentials.

Please note that there are various logins and passwords to be managed - Enterprise applications, API Services, Different Environments (Dev, Test, Production), Applications behind Citrix and many more. Soon this tends to grow. Credential management is core / foundational capability.

B : Role based, Restricted Access

A bot will be accessing Applications - e.g. within Enterprise, External applications, Government Sites and so on. Usually a bot will need to only perform a finite set of activities (E.g. upload files, export data based on criteria etc.). Typically the target applications do provide a set of roles with permission to perform specific activities. 

Restricting access to a Bot will prevent any accidental actions and further help with user confidence.   

C : Audit logs for Visibility to Bot Health

A User needs to understand what actions a bot is performing when a process is automated. More important is to understand the effectiveness of both. This is not only important during initial testing phases of Automation Process development but also for ongoing troubleshooting if there are issues - be it in business failures or technical failures. 

Design a robust logging component where information summary (e.g. Trends, patterns) and detail (e.g. process step level) can be provided.     

D : Manage the Clear ! 

Currently there are many regulations by Sector / Industry. In Healthcare, HIPAA ( Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance is key. The HIPAA Privacy regulations require applications to ensure confidentiality and security of protected health information (PHI) when it is used (transferred, received, processed, or shared). 

Automation applications should be designed to overall manage PHI information - at a minimum the following considerations become key::

• Avoid or Minimize use of PHI data where possible (e.g. for handling failures)
• PHI data to be encrypted. 
• Design a suitable data masking technique and mask PHI data. 
• Access Control (Who gets what access etc.) of PHI data is must. 
• Prevent direct access to PHI data. Ensure PHI data is only accessed through a known interface like a controlled Service or an application.

E : Perform Audits 

Supplement your Audit Logging Design with formal cadence for performing periodic Audits. This is important from multiple perspectives - key being changed. Change is inevitable and therefore it is important to understand bot’s responsiveness to change and course correct where needed. 

Note: Automation Applications are User Interface (UI) heavy - UI changes are to be expected over the life of an application.

F : Data, Storage and Lifecycle

Business Processes today deal with Bigdata - where volume, variety and veracity are to be planned and managed. Consequently one of the key Security and Risk considerations for an automation application is how data will be stored and managed through its lifecycle. 

This topic is a whitepaper topic in itself. However at a minimum the following needs to be considered:

• Data Storage: Typically a bot needs to provide storage (ideally shared storage) where not only the bot inputs or outputs are managed but  also shared with Users (Business or Technical). This storage should also be designed considering key factors like access control, synchronization if needed, data archival etc. 
• Data at Rest:  Make sure data at Rest is access controlled, encrypted (so that even in case of breach the compromise can be minimized)
• Data in Motion: In many cases a bot is designed to process high-volume transactional data - with bulk of the processing happening in-memory underpinned by a messaging / queue based architecture. It is important to ensure that the data in motion is also encrypted and controlled (even queue based persistence) - Ideally the Automation platforms will be able to provide this but if not a bot design should account for the same. 

G : Automation Environment and Access

The Automation Environment involves multiple components - not just the Automation Software but a host of other components - cloud based or otherwise (like Performance Monitoring, Log Analytics, Reporting etc). Policy based access / control to the environment to be formalized - few examples: :

• Has the automation code been reviewed and is per Quality standards?
• Are there formal best practices ? Have they been institutionalized and enforced (like handling failures to be consistent and comprehensive) ? 
• Is the code thoroughly tested and accepted by end users?  
• Who gets to execute / trigger a bot?
• Who gets to release code between environments? 
• Who gets to change configurations etc.
• Who gets to build and release code? 
  

Further, DevOps (build, test, deploy and change cycles) is integral to any Automation Software development. Automating this cycle could also help reduce the overall risk in managing deployment of automation code to production. 

H : Governance and Change

IPA is a strategic initiative for many firms today. Organizations should establish suitables policies and controls to secure their Automation Ecosystem. 

Further, Automation tends to bring Change - a new way of working, a new way of man-machine collaboration. This change has been managed and executed well for value delivery.

      Few key considerations in this context are:

• Monitoring and Managing Bot effectiveness
• Design with Business Continuity in mind
• Risk Management
• Performance management
• Selecting candidates for Automation

Conclusion - Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) provides powerful capability with tangible impact to both top-line and bottom-line. Like any strategic Initiative, IPA also needs to be planned, governed and managed well. Security and Control is foundational to not just Risk management but also value delivery at Scale. Element5 is working with a host of clients while offering IPA in the SaaS (Software as a Service) model. As we continue to learn working with our clients, we will keep the best practices updated. 

2020-2021 was the straw that nearly broke post-acute care’s back. Newer problems rearing their heads every other day and older ones getting worse, from staffing shortages, burnouts, archaic tech infrastructures to the truckloads of administrative bottlenecks across the entire post-acute care continuum. With the healthcare workforce stretched to its limits, these issues quickly turned into a huge constraint to care delivery.

The past year also shone new light on the importance and state of the home health and hospice industry across the United States. With changing care preferences, spurred on by the pandemic, the home quickly became a setting of choice for an increasing number of people. The need to ensure continued care delivery required the home health and hospice industry to look inwards to enact change by adopting new technologies to aid better patient care.

Disrupted administration, connected patient care

While a lot of the care delivery is reliant on human interaction, there is a vast, complex, and tedious administrative machinery that supports and enables the delivery of care. Automation deployment across the plethora of manual, tedious workflows across intake, revenue cycle, supply chain, compliance, and more will disrupt the home health and hospice industry. The time is right with increased investment and interest in the industry. The technology and its implementation are fiscally viable, easily achievable with the right partner, with quick, tangible ROI, and will supercharge both the operations and staff of home health and hospice agencies.

Today, home health and hospice staff across the industry are bogged down by tedious administrative tasks required by compliance for seamless operations and maintaining cash flow. Be it managing inventory, claim submissions and denial management, invoices, or updating EHRs most agencies are chronically behind on these tasks. The staff is left battling these tasks which inhibit focus on patient care and drain morale, causing revenue leaks, burnouts, and increased turnovers. Trained software robots powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) take care of these tasks and prevent them from affecting operations and cash flow. The ability of AI & RPA powered bots to perform the rule-based administrative tasks without fatigue and errors enables home health and hospice agencies to focus on improving care delivery, freeing up more time for staff to ensure better patient outcomes.

Transforming the back office of home health and hospices with automation

The massive amounts of potential savings from automating manual, tedious tasks apart, the true ROI at this juncture is from the hundreds of hours saved that could go towards care. The time and staff energies saved in trying to escape the quicksand that is administrative tasks by itself can help in the fight to tackle shortages. With the right technology partner, such as Element5, true ROI-led workflow automation can boost productivity across all levels of operations at home health agencies & hospices, reduce staff burnouts and tackle the inefficiencies towards one goal: better patient experience. Learn more about how automation powered by AI & RPA can help your home health or hospice agency here.

What is happening between Feb 6 - Feb 9, 2022?

Over 500 leaders in post-acute care are coming together at the Phoenician in Scottsdale, Arizona to socialize, share ideas, and talk about the state of home care in the United States. 

Home Care 100’s mission is to help healthcare providers become exceptional in leadership, strategy and innovation and help the entire system move towards greater value. 

This year, Element5 will be among the attendees of Home Care 100. We’re excited to meet the leaders of the top 100 Home Care organizations in the U.S. and discuss how the industry is shifting towards greater efficiency, better staffing and improved revenues. All while we soak up some Arizona sun and enjoy the couple of days of socializing. 

Element5 delivers unique value to post-acute care. Using AI and RPA, our automated workflows empower post-acute care teams and administrative staff to spend less time on repetitive administrative tasks. This allows them to spend less time on work that requires hundreds of repetitive clicks and focus on higher value tasks. For an industry such as post-acute care, technologies like RPA are a breath of fresh air, especially considering how other industries have already begun the rampant adoption of workflow automation.

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How does workflow automation work?

AI & RPA uses trained software robots that are programmed to perform repetitive functions between existing post-acute care systems. As a result, these bots log in to systems on behalf of teams and follow rule based instructions to complete tasks. 

This is especially important to an industry that is rapidly changing and going through unprecedented times. The home care market is expected to grow  owing to the aging baby boomers and increasing disabilities among the geriatric population.  The industry is facing a severe shortage of staff and traditional means of overcoming challenges are not expected to yield positive outcomes. 

Typically, the solution to these problems has been to throw more bodies at it. However, workflow automation is transforming the way they operate.

So if you’re going to be at Home Care 100, we can’t wait to meet you.  On February 9th,  Eric Gordon Co-founder & CRO, will take centre stage to talk about how post-acute care organizations can increase staff productivity & eliminate operational bottlenecks through workflow automation. Don’t forget to catch this session. 

Excited to see you soon!

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Healthcare claims are put through an inordinate amount of scrutiny before payouts, largely due to the plethora of healthcare regulations and guidelines. Newer compliance-based regulations levied by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of the Inspector General, and other auditing entities are making post-acute care organizations jump through hoops to ensure the financial robustness of their operations.

The post-acute care financial landscape was treacherous enough before, and the pandemic has only made it more challenging to navigate for organizations across the nation. With organizations feeling the staffing shortage pinch due to vaccine mandates, burnouts, changing guidelines, and more, administrative tasks requiring manual, tedious labor are accumulating over months at a time. Claim denials and the resulting write-offs are the single most overlooked source of financial vulnerability for organizations both big & small. With the average denial rate across just the skilled nursing industry of 5%, operators stand to lose over $120,000 per facility in just write-offs each year.

The loss of revenue from just delayed or incomplete payments and write-offs are not easy to quantify & qualify and build up over time to plague the operations of post-acute care organizations. This is where technology like automation can aid the situation and help post-acute care organizations to prevent the financial drain from claim denials.

Enacting change through a digital workforce

Workflow automation solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are being utilized by early post-acute care adopters to increase reimbursements and reduce the cost to collect across the revenue cycle. Denial management automation is just one part of that ecosystem and can single handedly make a huge difference to the organization's revenue stream.

Trained software robots take care of the identification of denial codes and resolution with little to no manual intervention from the staff. Clinical staff no longer need to scour through pages of the EOB to find the denial codes to begin resolution on the denied claim. The denial automation solution automatically monitors & scans the clearinghouse for denials, importing the denial status, codes, and reason into the EHR. Furthermore, the solution also triggers the workflow for correction, notifying the relevant staff member required to perform the correction. All this before the 835 is even available for download.

Reduce errors, save time, increase revenue - All in a day's work

Quite literally. With vendors like Element5, automation solutions built for post-acute care needs are now more easily accessible for deployment at minimal investment for exceptional, tangible returns. Moreover, the scalable nature of the technology allows post-acute care organizations of all sizes to benefit from it. The assurance of zero errors and a fatigue-free system ensure that denial write-offs can become a thing of the past. No more spending hours trying to find denial codes, no boring data entry tasks, and no lost revenue due to denials. Don't take our word for it, check all of it out in action here.

The workflow automation provider for post-acute care received the validation through rigorous audits, demonstrating commitment to protect customer data.

‍San Jose, California, October 13, 2021: Element5, an Automation as a Service solution leveraging AI and RPA for post-acute care, today announced that it has received its Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2 Certification. The audit validated Element5’s operations, which meet the highest industry standard for security and compliance in their information security practices, governance, and policies. 

The SOC 2 examination demonstrates that an independent accounting and auditing firm has reviewed and examined an organization's infrastructure, software, people, data, policies, procedures, and operations, and tested those controls to ensure that they are operating effectively. Established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), it ensures the personal and business assets of existing and potential customers are secure and protected. 

In August 2021, Element5 announced the completion of its Series A round of funding at $15 million. The SOC2 Type 2 certification comes at the heels of rapidly expanding and helping more post-acute care organizations automate their operations, with the confidence and comfort of data privacy and security. 

About Element5

Element5 is simplifying work for post-acute care organizations by offering end-to-end workflow Automation-as-a-Service. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Element5 delivers intelligent automation and analytics that help organizations improve operational efficiency, recognize revenue faster and help their resources focus on better patient outcomes. 

By automating complex administrative tasks for post-acute care, Element5 frees healthcare personnel from time-consuming and repetitive processes, empowering teams to do more, by doing less. 

Built by experts with decades of experience in healthcare and post-acute care, Element5 is headquartered in San Jose, California with offices in Chennai, India. You can learn more about Element5 and RPA on www.e5.ai 

Media contact

Abhilash Kumar 

Head of Marketing 

abhilash.k@e5.ai 

With a push towards quality & better compliance, there have been multiple upgrades and overhauls the post-acute industry has witnessed in the past few years. Proven technology has played a major role in helping catalyze the same.

Take a look at the recent upgrade made to the OASIS submission by the CMS to enhance user-friendliness. The new CMS data submission system, Internet Quality Improvement & Evaluation System (iQIES), is now internet-based, complete with multiple changes aimed to improve the claims match process and relay of data back to the Home health agency(HHA) EHRs.

Adding to the administrative burden on post-acute care staff

But as with every other compliance-related task in post-acute care, this new change has also added to the administrative burden of care teams at HHAs across the nation. With every change/update, comes a new learning curve for the staff and with the ongoing workforce shortage being aggravated by the pandemic, additional manual, administrative tasks only seemed counterproductive to the welfare of staff amid these trying times.

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This is why some organizations have turned to workflow automation for their OASIS submissions to iQIES and are reaping fantastic results from hundreds of hours saved, better patient outcomes, and fewer over-burdened staff. A win-win in everyone's books.

AI & RPA to the rescue

Workflow automation solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are enabling post-acute care organizations to tackle the burden of administrative tasks on their care teams. By automating rule-based, repetitive tasks such as all the OASIS submissions to iQIES and downloading the final reports. Everything right from the download of OASIS files from EHR, upload of assessments to iQIES, review of submission history, final validation reports, and the updation of iQIES data onto the EHR can be entirely done with the help of programmed software robots. A zero error, zero fatigue, and zero manual intervention system with insightful reports available at the touch of a button for care staff.

One administrative task less equals hundreds of hours of patient care - with an easily available solution

OASIS submissions to iQIES can be time-consuming, error-prone, and add to the vast administrative burden for clinical teams across home healthcare. Element5's AI & RPA powered workflow automation solution can help remove this burden from the shoulders of care teams and optimize the operational efficiency of organizations by enabling more time for patient care and improved care outcomes. See the automation software in action here.

Review Choice Demonstration (RCD) has turned into a major bone of contention between CMS and home health care advocates in the recent time leading up to its implementation. With COVID putting a dent into the plans made by CMS and missteps on the part of its contractors, there has been no shortage of delays. Even with all of its flaws and the backlash RCD implementation is receiving from home health associations in the five participating states, like the winter, it is coming. Let’s find out what RCD is all about.

What is Review Choice Demonstration? 

Review Choice Demonstration has been implemented to help ensure that the right payments go through at the right time for all home health services disbursed. The claim reviews will protect Medicare from disbursing improper payments, further reducing the number of Medicare appeals and improve provider compliance with Medicare program requirements.

It can also help prevent all fraud and misuse of Medicare benefits and help educate Home Health Agencies(HHA) about their compliance requirements. Agencies participating in RCD will get to choose from three types of claim review submissions to Palmetto GBA:

1.) Pre-Claim Review

Seeks provisional affirmation of claim coverage before a final claim payment submission. Claims submitted without a Pre-Claim review undergo prepayment review and are subject to a 25% payment reduction.

2.) Post-Payment Review

Seeks review of claims after a claim payment submission, also is the initial default if no selection is made by the HHA. Palmetto GBA, the Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC), sends Additional Documentation Requests (ADRs) to follow CMS' post-payment review procedures.

3.) Minimal Post-Payment Review

All claims are subject to a 25% reduction in final payment. Claims are excluded from Targeted Probe and Educate reviews but can still be subject to Recovery Audit Contractor Reviews. Once selected, the provider remains active on this choice for the duration of the Demo.

Every six months thereafter, home health agencies demonstrating compliance with Medicare rules through pre-claim or post-claim reviews have additional choices, including relief from most reviews except for a review of a small sample of claims. If an agency maintains a 90% or greater pre-claim review affirmation rate or post-payment review approval rate, it chooses from a different subset of review options, mainly,

1.) Pre-Claim Review

4.) Selective Post-Payment Review -  involves analyzing a random sample of claims

5.) Spot Check Review - Palmetto GBA selects 5% of HHA claims every 6 months for review, sharing Additional Document requests to follow CMS prepayment review procedures.

Why Review Choice Demonstration for Home Health Agencies is proving to be challenging

One might say, it all looks like a neat deal that will help reduce the misuse of Medicare funding, but the rollout of Review Choice Demonstration has been anything but smooth for HHAs. With the pandemic wreaking havoc in the participating states, especially Florida & North Carolina, skyrocketing referral rates, and clinical staff stretched thinner than paper home health agencies are already struggling with huge claims backlogs. Since RCD is another compliance-related process, it comes across as a burden to organizations in these trying times, drawing flak from prominent voices in the homecare industry.

Another major concern for the organizations is that the introduction of the claim review  process will add to the encumbrance of manual, repetitive administrative tasks, which there is no shortage of in the home care industry. The amount of time spent transposing EHR data onto Palmetto GBAs platform to start the claim review process is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive. Coupled with data transfer between the EHRs and Palmetto GBA, there is ample scope for errors to creep in, both technical and human, and this problem has the perfect solution: Automation.

Simplifying the process for home health agencies participating in the Review Choice Demonstration 

Workflow automation solutions designed to automate the claims review process of Review Choice Demonstration can perform all rule-based documentation for clinical teams. The entire claim review process, right from accessing EHR records to uploading them onto Palmetto, extracting responses from Palmetto, and uploading them into the EHRs after applying relevant business rules and audits, automation can do it all, and more.

How to automate the pre-claim review process

Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Robotic Process Automation (RPA), workflow automation has been working wonders for its early adopters in the home health industry. It is helping clinical staff save hundreds of hours on mundane administrative work, enabling them to focus on utilizing that time towards better patient and self-care, improving job satisfaction, and thereby decreasing turnovers. While speaking about automation in the same line as job satisfaction might seem counterintuitive to some, there is plenty of research on the link between mundane, repetitive work and low job satisfaction.

Now, before you go, check out a video here to learn exactly automation will simplify your claim reviews for Review Choice Demonstration.

Once you complete watching the video, you might think “this is what our staff does”, and to that, we say, EXACTLY. All actions that you see being performed in the video, were done without any human intervention. Workflow automation can remove the chance of errors in claims and ensure seamless revenue recognition, allowing care staff to disburse the best patient care and the organization to remain compliant with zero operational inefficiencies.

It is a win, win situation for home healthcare, we dare say.

I’m living every CEO’s dream. An incredible team that challenges me at every step, partners who accentuate our offerings and champion us at every touchpoint. And customers. People who have chosen to work with us because they believe, even at the deep end of the ocean, we’re there to guide them to the shores of success. 

Element5 is exactly two summers old. There was no doubt in our minds that there was a huge gap in post-acute care, and addressing it would mean solving scores of problems across departments. In a short time, we’ve seen extensive traction, and all roads have led to this sweet spot. 

Today, I am pleased to announce that Element5 has closed its Series A funding of $15M led by Insight partners. Insight Partners is a world-class firm whose past investments include logos such as Shopify, Twitter, Docusign, Alibaba, Trivago, Kinnser, and Netsmart to name a few. More than just the financial investment, Insight Partners will also be a great addition to our strategic roadmap, providing us guidance and traction to expand our market foothold. Their experience working with the nuances of fueling AI & RPA adoption will be a great addition to growing our arsenal of post-acute care clients.

While RPA is still a nascent technology in healthcare, it has been widely applied across other industries to great success. And all the years working in healthcare made us quickly realize that the post-acute market direly needed tech enablement. We took the opportunity to introduce RPA to post-acute care and showcase how it can help streamline processes, reduce work and most importantly, save time. What really sets Element5 apart is the focus on delivering automation-as-a-service. We’re simplifying the adoption of RPA for post-acute care by delivering pre-built workflows that allow organizations to get started on automation faster, better and stronger. 

We’re in a fantastic position as a disruptor enabler; the opportunity is there, our solution is spot-on, macro-trends are in our favor, and we now have the funding to make a big splash. Together, we’re on the road to changing the way post-acute care teams work. Here’s to a future where workflow automation is ubiquitous across the post-acute care landscape.

This could not be possible without three sets of people.

Our partners, who believe in this mission as much as we do, and provide us the waves as we steer this ship in the right direction.

Customers, who believe in us and the power of RPA. Our true north.
Lastly, the employees of Element5, a dedicated team that reinvigorates me with passion and hope each day. Brilliant minds who inspire the world and make everything possible.

Jennifer Maxwell serves as the co-founder and co-CEO of Maxwell Healthcare Associates

SAN JOSE, California- July  30, 2021 - Element5, an Automation as a Service solution leveraging AI and RPA for post-acute care, announced the appointment of Jennifer Maxwell to their Board of Directors. Jennifer is currently the co-founder and CEO of Maxwell Healthcare Associates, (MHA) an industry leading consulting firm in post-acute care and Strategic Advisor to Medalogix, a one-of-a-kind data analytics company also in the post-acute care space. With the addition of Jennifer Maxwell to its board of directors, Element5 aims to strengthen its technology leadership and accelerate the adoption of AI (Artificial Intelligence) & RPA (Robotic Process Automation) based solutions across the post-acute care industry. 

Jennifer Maxwell has also served as President of Muse Healthcare, Executive Director of the Minnesota Homecare Association and Division Director for Mesa County Department of Human Services. This combined experience over her career has helped clients and organizations to achieve new heights of operational, technological, regulatory and financial efficiencies. 

Last year, Element5 announced the closing of its seed round of funding, with a commitment to simplify the adoption of RPA for post-acute care. Element5 delivers end-to-end workflow automation-as-a-service by programming software robots to complete work as if they are humans, leveraging AI and RPA technologies.

About Element5

Element5 is simplifying work for post-acute care organizations by offering end to end workflow Automation-as-a-Service. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Element5 delivers intelligent automation and analytics that help organizations improve operational efficiency, recognize revenue faster and help their resources focus on better patient outcomes. 

By automating complex administrative tasks for post-acute care, Element5 frees healthcare personnel from time-consuming and repetitive processes, empowering teams to do more, by doing less. 

Built by experts with decades of experience in healthcare and post acute care, Element5 is headquartered in San Jose, California with offices in Chennai, India. You can learn more about Element5 and RPA on www.e5.ai

‍Media contact

Abhilash Kumar 

Head of Marketing 

abhilash.k@e5.ai 

Why is it that with increasing technology adoption, the barriers to ease of use only seem to be going up? Isn't technology meant to remove these barriers in the first place and make doing work easier?

Take the healthcare industry's example, which has a plethora of technology solutions to choose from. But a poor implementation strategy and understanding has led to less streamlining/reduction of processes and instead created more work for healthcare staff. What's more, the cost of these ill-utilized solutions would fall under administrative costs. Interestingly enough, the administrative bloat in the US healthcare system accounts for over 30% of all healthcare spending.

The post-acute care industry is worse off in keeping up with the technology updates, with several organizations using fax machines even today. With administrative overheads that cost both time and resources strewn across the post-acute care landscape, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the perfect fit for the industry. With RPA, complex processes that require repetition and several clicks can be performed with no manual intervention, faster and more efficiently. Imagine all the tedious administrative tasks, rule-based documentation required by compliance done while the caregiving staff gets to focus on the patient care experience, working on top of their license.

However, you might wonder what that entails. What tasks can RPA automate for a post-acute care organization? Can it only be utilized in one department or more? Even within a single process, there are multiple workflows, can they be automated too? We can't answer all your questions here. So, we are sharing the five most important processes that RPA can automate for post-acute care organizations.

1. Intake Automation

The intake management process is critical to any post-acute care organization. It has multiple processes that have the potential to be automated for efficiency from managing bed occupancy optimally, managing referrals, checking eligibility, and more. Here's what you can automate:

• The multiple daily discharge & referral modules
• Patient transitions between different service lines
• Eligibility check to system of record
• Authorization management to system of record

2. Clinical Automation

Clinical processes in post-acute care bring in massive volumes of data management required by regulations and compliances. They are a critical part of the revenue recognition activities and any error can mean potentially delayed/lost revenue. RPA can take on several of these tasks and perform them quickly, without error and zero fatigue. Here's what you can automate:

• Scheduling activities across service lines
• Quality Assurance checks and compliance audits
• OASIS file submission through iQIES
• Review Choice Demonstration

3. Medical Records Automation

As more technologies come into the fray, the challenges of integrating with the existing tools, systems of records, and other operations come to the fore. Managing all these integrations can be a tedious process that sometimes adds more work instead of reducing it. RPA without any interoperability limitations can be the perfect solution to handle integrations delivering better operational efficiency and faster outcomes. Here are some integrations that you can automate:

• Orders/Physician notifications
• Migration of active census to a new system
• Clinical & Financial due-diligence audits
• Certain HR tasks and related activities

4. Revenue Cycle Management (RCM)

The faster revenue can be recognized, the better decisions post-acute care teams can take to facilitate the best patient care experience. With billing in post-acute care requiring authorizations, medical coding, and much more, RCM is a long-drawn process. With several tasks important for processing payments requiring documentation that can take days or even weeks, RPA can help move the process faster, further reducing resource overheads. Here are some workflows that can help you recognize revenue faster:

• Seamless claims and denials automation
• Insurance re-verification & pre-billing audits automation
• Faster data collection for all Accounts Receivable
• Automated month-end processes, the closing of books, etc.

5. Data Aggregation

Gaining a 360-degree perspective of operations is a challenge across post-acute care. Advanced analytics and insights drawn by bots allow teams to rapidly make decisions that positively impact care quality and business performance. Here's how RPA can help you do more with your data:

• A unified view into your operations across service lines with quick, detailed report generation
• Data-driven analytics and visualizations updated by the minute
• Receive meaningful insights into critical areas needed to evaluate staff

This blog first appeared in McKnight's Senior Living.

When we think about 2020, healthcare inevitably comes up. While organizations continue on their mission to manage the pandemic, it’s also time for them to begin thinking about future-proofing themselves to create a more robust system of delivery. This holds especially true for home health organizations that need to actively reorganize themselves for better patient outcomes. But where does this future-proofing journey begin?

Healthcare beyond the four walls of the hospital    

Take a moment to assess the scale of the home health industry. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were 11,844 home health agencies in the U.S. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that people in the age bracket of 65 will grow from 43 million in 2012 to over 85 million in 2050. With this growth in the old age population, the demand for home health services is expected to grow as well. By 2025, this market is poised to reach $147.45 billion.

In order to keep up with the magnitude of this growth, there are four key areas that home-based healthcare needs to focus on. Much like healthcare as a whole, home health organizations also need to align themselves largely to the quadruple aim, which refers to better patient experiences, improved care outcomes, lower cost of care and better staff experiences.

There are several technological solutions that cater to the home health market. While organizations have myriad options, here are three technologies that are increasingly gaining adoption in post-acute care and, more specifically, among home health teams.

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Despite the rise in technology adoption in healthcare, the post-acute care industry has been slow on the uptake. This is in part due to a poor understanding of the technology and a lack of insight into the merits. It is a well-known fact that every dollar spent on operational inefficiencies is a dollar that cannot be spent on care delivery and improving patient outcomes. The post-acute care system in the US is overrun with rule-based, repetitive administrative tasks that take up an inordinate amount of time. These documentation tasks often cut into the hours of the operations teams leading to overburdened staff unable to work at the top of their license. Automation fits in as the perfect answer to this problem.

What is RPA and how can it help

RPA or Robotic Process Automation is a system of recording tasks where machines are instructed to execute rule-based tasks precisely. Robots (or bots) find logical steps and perform repetitive, labor-intensive tasks utilizing the same systems that post-acute teams utilize with no human intervention. RPA, when implemented correctly, comes in as a boon for post-acute care organizations, functioning as a digital assistant that performs all of the tasks just as humans would only faster, more accurately, and efficiently. It allows for the organization's medical teams to focus on business-critical functions and deliver better patient outcomes. RPA, in conjunction with AI, can help automate post-acute care workflows such as intake management, claims and denials, RCM, record management, and a plethora more waiting to be found. In just the intake management process alone, post-acute care teams stand to save hundreds of hours working on tasks such as managing referrals, checking eligibility, audits, and more. These processes can be performed substantially faster and more efficiently through automation. All that time saved can now go towards providing a better, more fulfilling patient care experience.

Is it too early to adopt RPA?

According to market studies, the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market is expected to reach $5bn by 2024. The healthcare segment is expected to be one of the fastest-growing sectors over this forecast period. Moreover, with more and more provider networks focusing on interoperability as a key requirement while considering their referrals, it has become paramount for post-acute care organizations to focus on upping their technology game. RPA is not a band-aid fix to the situation either since it can be easily scaled along with the organization's tech infrastructure owing to its tech-agnostic nature. RPA is easily implemented with the help of the right partner, at almost zero technology overhead, and exhibits tangible ROI from Day 1.

In conclusion, RPA is a technology that directly aligns with the core values of lowering the cost of care and improving staff experience to build on and go beyond the only bottom line, better patient care. While there are several players in the RPA for the healthcare space, Element5 has built RPA based workflow automation solutions, specifically for post-acute teams. Now all that's left to be seen is how the post-acute care leaders rise to step forth on this evolutionary journey.

Excerpt from the full conversation

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One area of the MHA team’s work that is cutting edge is RPA, Robot Process Automation. What does this mean, and how does it affect home-based care providers, including hospices?

Maxwell: RPA is definitely up and coming. We partnered with Element5 to bring much needed automation to the post-acute care industry. What we have seen with those agencies that home-grow their RPA — or piece it together with smaller firms — are a lot of errors and breakdowns in the automation. They are having humans continuously monitor for those breaks, thus negating the whole objective of leveraging RPA.

Element5 has next-level technology that minimizes the need for humans to monitor. We are working closely with them and developing numerous workflows and automations that are extremely detailed and efficient. They are saving time, people and money along with increasing efficiencies within agencies.

We also are utilizing the RPA post-acquisition transactions to automate the technology transfer of data that would typically take numerous consultants and time to complete. For example, if you take a large hospice with a 2000-plus census that has to migrate all those patients over into the new technology, that would typically take weeks to do. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours. We’re able to take it down to like four days. Think about the ROI on that acquisition. It is profound. You’re saving time to full transition, decreasing impact on staff and mitigating potential burnout and room for error, to name a few.

We have a great level of confidence with Element5. Our client successes have been multiplying.

Excerpt from the full article

Another emerging technology that is gaining ground is robotic process automation (RPA). This technology can be configured to perform actions within and between systems. RPA uses robots to automate workflows and manage complex and repetitive tasks involving electronic health records (EHR), payer sites and financial systems. RPA systems can be used to automate certain workflows in patient intake, authorizations and reauthorizations and revenue cycle management.

When double checking a patient’s authorization, for instance, a staff member typically has to login to the EHR and enter information from that system into a payer portal, as well as download required documentation and in turn update the EHR with the authorization data. RPA can automate the data entry process, eliminating several steps, according to Joe Randesi, co-founder & CEO, Element5.

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Excerpt from the full blog

The use of technology to help organizations produce meaningful work and gain previously unheard efficiencies is the eventual goal of all users of technology. Nowhere is this more needed than in the home health and hospice industry.  Cost control is paramount in-home health and hospice when it comes to the foundation of a profitable business that will be able to weather the regulatory storms that seem to hit us every year. The home health and hospice systems are built on who can be the most efficient at the lowest cost and provide the patients with the highest level of care possible.

Therefore, it’s is incumbent upon providers to use every available tool to make this seemingly possible task profitable and prosperous for years to come. We would like to introduce you to a tool called Robot Process Automation (RPA) paired with Artificial Intelligence, and MHA currently works with an amazing new provider of this service named Element5.

To learn more about our partnership and read the full post click here.

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An Oxford University study in 2013 told everyone what we’d all been wondering: Will a robot one day take my job? The report — “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?” — offered its ranking of 702 jobs and careers based on how easily they could be automated.

Not surprisingly, the home-based care sector fared pretty well, as therapists, social workers and mental health professionals made up 40% of the top 10 safest jobs.

That does not mean that robotics and automation have no place in home-based care. The contrary. Robot process automation, or RPA, is software that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate a variety of menial, repetitive tasks that otherwise fall on clinicians. In home health and hospice, RPA is hugely beneficial for revenue cycle work, for example.

RPA saves home-based care providers both time and money, and is a long-term cost savings tool...

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The partnership is aimed at strengthening healthcare data compliance and security measures across Element5's workflow automation suite for post-acute care

SAN JOSE, Calif. and NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 26, 2021 / -- Element5 and LBMC, today, announced a strategic partnership that aims to bring greater enterprise-grade security and healthcare compliance to Element5's existing suite of AI and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) solutions. The strength of this partnership comes at the heels of Element5's rapidly growing portfolio of automation workflows that enable post-acute care organizations to witness tangible ROI by automating their administrative processes.

Element5 provides pre-built intelligent automation solutions that allow post-acute care teams to eliminate the need for manual intervention across repetitive workflows. With an added layer of intelligent reporting, teams are able to spend less time on administrative functions and more time delivering better patient outcomes. Element5 will leverage the expertise of LBMC to better manage data, information security and patient privacy in its end-to-end workflow automation solutions.

Last year, Element5 announced the closing of its seed round of funding, with a commitment to bring workflow automation solutions to hospice and homecare agencies. In 2020, Element5 also received its SOC2 certification as a part of its continued commitment towards better customer security. Today, organizations across the U.S. are automating a range of labor intensive processes such as quality assurance, authorizations, order management, and revenue cycle management using Element5's AI and RPA based solutions.

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ABOUT Element5

Element5 provides intelligent automation solutions for post-acute care. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Element5 simplifies the execution of complex processes that incur high costs and are often labor intensive.

Element5 is on a mission to enable clinical and operational teams to focus on better care delivery, by freeing them from encumbrances of administrative tasks. Intelligent bots, pre-built workflows and interoperability with EHR systems enable faster delivery of repetitive processes while minimizing errors.

Built by experts with over a century of collective experience in healthcare and post acute care, Element5 is helping organizations do more, by doing less. Headquartered in San Jose, California with offices in Chennai, you can learn more about Element5 and RPA at www.e5.ai

‍About LBMC

LBMC is a Forbes 2020 Top Recommended Firm, one of the Southeast's largest accounting and business consulting firms and a top 50 firm in the nation serving approximately 10,000 clients with diverse needs across a spectrum of industries. The LBMC Family of Companies has more than 700 employees, with offices in Chattanooga, Nashville (Brentwood), and Knoxville, TN. Founded in 1984 as a traditional accounting firm, LBMC has expanded its focus to meet a broad range of advisory and business consulting needs for its diverse client base. Today, we've become industry leaders in financial, human resources, technology, information security, and wealth advisory services for businesses and individuals. For more information, visit www.lbmc.com.

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 1, 2020 -- Element5, the San Jose startup building Homecare's first Automation Hub, has today announced the closing of $2.5 million in seed round funding.

Founded in late 2019, Element5 is rethinking the way work gets done by bringing automation-as-a-service solutions to Homecare and Hospice providers. The technology is built on the foundation of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) and delivers end-to-end automations for key workflows. Accompanying each automated workflow are rich, powerful analytics that help clients gain valuable insight into their business.

Randesi and co-founder Eric Gordon, Element5's Chief Revenue Office, have served the Homecare and Hospice market for 12+ years. Gordon says, "We empower our clients to perform at the top of their competency, enabling them to focus on the highest value tasks. With ever-changing industry rules and regulations, the time and energy spent just to stay compliant is enormous and often creates operational bottlenecks. Automating compliance-related workflows will provide our clients with the freedom they need to rethink how work gets done."

Element5 co-founders also include CTO Murali Vivenankandan and COO Bhavani Raman. "I am excited about helping providers adopt cutting-edge technology in a simple, meaningful way," says Vivekanandan. "Combining AI, RPA, and other complementary tools will create powerful solutions that will truly change the way our clients get work done."

About Element5

Element5 provides intelligent automation solutions for post-acute care. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Element5 simplifies the execution of complex processes that incur high costs and are often labor intensive.

Element5 is on a mission to enable clinical and operational teams to focus on better care delivery, by freeing them from encumbrances of administrative tasks. Intelligent bots, pre-built workflows and interoperability with EHR systems enable faster delivery of repetitive processes while minimizing errors.

Built by experts with over a century of collective experience in healthcare and post acute care, Element5 is helping organizations do more, by doing less. Headquartered in San Jose, California with offices in Chennai, you can learn more about Element5 and RPA at www.e5.ai or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.