How Robotic Process Automation Can Help Health Plan Operations Do More with Less

Robotic Process Automation helps health plans do more with less

Healthcare is becoming more complex every day. With new government programs, existing programs changing, how we interact with customers changing, not to mention increased regulation, it takes real thought to hone processes to keep up.

Enter Robotic Process Automation (RPA.) RPA can be described as software agents that complete repetitive tasks in business processes, freeing human workers to do higher value work. Dell Services has deployed its RPA solution — Automated Full –Time Equivalent (AFTE) — with a number of customers to help them increase productivity and accuracy, as well as keep up with their increasingly complex environments.

“We had a number of claims that got stopped in the process for manual handling,” says Karen Carlson, Director of Claims, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI), one of Dell’s AFTE customers. “We incorporated the robots, and it has increased our efficiency. Claims are going out every day instead of bottlenecking in the program.”

AFTEs have helped BCBSRI reduce manual workloads by 25 to 30 percent.

Here are just a few of the benefits of AFTE in healthcare:

  • Helps meet regulated location requirements by allowing business processes to work 24×7 without going offshore (the robots don’t have to sleep)
  • Can be applied to almost any platform or system so no replacing entire infrastructures
  • Can be deployed in as little as two weeks
  • Performance is monitored  through the AFTE Command Center just as you would monitor the performance of human workers
  • The robots learn on the job—after they are stopped in a process, they incorporate any learnings and apply that knowledge the next time they encounter a similar situation.

Carlson says the implementation of AFTE has gone so well that she now has “a list of 50 people standing in line waiting to get their own robot.”

A link to a Dell Services BrightTalk WebinarIf you’d like to hear more about BCBSRI’s RPA implementation and tips on how to deploy RPA in your business, listen to this webinar, These are the droids you are looking for, as Dell Services Health Plan experts talk with Carlson about how AFTE has helped them manage this new complex healthcare world.

About the Author: Tanvir Khan