Robotic Process Automation has been successfully applied to a New Zealand District Health Board (DHB), demonstrating its ability to deliver real value reliably.
The pilot delivered immediate benefits to the regional health board. The manual effort for end-to-end pilot process is estimated to require over 4,600 hours effort annually, or the equivalent of 2-2.5 full time employees. The pilot achieved an immediate straight through processing success rate of 77% providing over 3,300 hours benefit to the public health organisation.
Hutt Valley DHB’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) journey began in 2016. Demand to provide higher levels of clinical, administrative support was stretching current resourcing. The opportunity was to find a technology solution that could reduce the manual effort while working within the existing complex systems and architecture.
As a critical process, e-referrals was identified as a suitable candidate where RPA could be applied with the potential to realise immediate value. This inefficient manual process was chosen for the pilot because it requires human interaction with systems that were not readily directly connectable by alternative integration methods. This process was also selected because of the highly repetitive rules-based, and it was considered a relatively straightforward process based on the number of target systems that the process primarily interacts with (Concerto and WebPAS).
Following a comprehensive review and planning exercise the application of Robotic Process Automation has been extended to include Capital & Coast DHB and Wairarapa DHB.
As an initial planning step, Hutt Valley DHB completed a strategic opportunity assessment, which identified over $1.5 million in potential benefit.