Here is a brief story told by Jincy Jerry, Assistant Director of Nursing Infection Prevention & Control at Mater Hospital, about how RPA from UiPath has lifted the burden off the nursing team.
“So far the hospital has analyzed 4001 COVID tests and out of this around 3887 were process in-house and 524 patients were detected for Covid-19. Identification and prevention of healthcare-associated Covid is a challenging task and we contact surveillance to critically analyze the data like transfers within the hospital, patient and staff contacts, their length of stay, ICU admissions, and so on. So, the trial has saved a substantial amount of time by collecting this data. The robot helped us to collect this data. Nursing Infection Prevention & Control utilized the time saved from this robot process for more essential services such as some training, responding to queries as they arise, and provide guidance on support. In addition to the Covid data collection, the robot will also assist us in extracting the lab results for multiple antimicrobial-resistant organisms. So this is a very old laboratory system that is developed in the 1980s which has its own limitations. On average, a member of IPC team takes three hours a day to complete this process. This is a tedious repetitive task which nobody enjoys completing and it has become increasingly difficult to complete this complex administrative task whilst trying to manage a real pandemic.
Once the burden of this repetitive task can be lifted, the department could use the existing resources in an innovative way to decrease the healthcare-associated infections, decrease the Hospital length of stay and reduce human error which is really important. So the time saved by using robotic process automation software could be directed towards auditing and feedback patient care and the education involving both staff and patient, and quality improvement initiatives. The key is to free up the resources to deliver the services in a more impactful way.“
