SS&C Blue Prism's Automation Managed Service Team Implements Critical Referral Transfer Automation in Five Weeks

A U.K. healthcare provider aims to be one of the best acute caregivers in the country, providing nearly one million patients with state-of-the-art care. To enhance healthcare delivery, the organization recently undertook a major technology shift and implemented Epic, an electronic patient record (EPR) system that delivers significant benefits. However, connecting their current electronic referral system (ERS) to Epic was challenging. It was critical that referrals continued to flow between systems uninterrupted. The healthcare provider partnered with SS&C Blue Prism professional services to rapidly implement an intelligent automation (IA) solution to connect the two systems.

A new digital system brings new challenges

Previously, the healthcare provider utilized more than 200 paper and digital systems to manage patient care. They decided to implement Epic to simplify their operations and create a single electronic system to handle patient records. Healthcare providers across the U.K. use an ERS to send and receive referrals from general practitioners (GPs), specialists and hospitals. The healthcare provider needed a way to transfer the referrals from ERS into Epic, so that the patients could be treated, and their results could be communicated back to GPs and other caregivers — but this was easier said than done.

Administrative teams had been manually uploading referrals from the ERS to the current EPR systems, which wasn’t sustainable. A reduction of administrative efforts is one of Epic’s key business benefits, so it didn’t make sense for the teams to continue manually uploading referrals. Additionally, with Epic coming online, all records had to be transferred to the new system at once. If done manually, the healthcare provider would need to add a large team of temporary employees to complete this task. The clock was ticking — Epic was set to go online in just three weeks. The outpatient team needed a quick and effective solution.

SS&C Blue Prism’s automation-managed service team jumps in

The healthcare provider determined that intelligent automation was the best solution to quickly move their referrals from the ERS to Epic. However, the resources and expertise to implement the solution internally were limited, especially in such a tight timeframe. SS&C Blue Prism had digital workers to help manage the referrals, and also a team of SS&C Blue Prism experts and developers available to work alongside the healthcare provider’s outpatient team.

The team took advantage of SS&C Blue Prism’s automation-managed service program. This way, they didn’t have to learn multiple new technologies. Instead, they could focus on understanding the nuances of Epic while the SS&C Blue Prism team took on the development of automations.

In just five weeks — after daily calls and four dedicated SS&C Blue Prism developers constantly working alongside the internal team — the healthcare provider had transferred nearly 30,000 referrals into Epic.

Digital workers help improve patient experience and reduce risk

Now, when a GP creates a referral in the ERS, an SS&C Blue Prism digital worker locates it, performs various checks and puts the referral directly into the patient record in Epic so that a consultant can triage the referral. If patients are new, the digital worker registers them. Digital workers don’t stop there. Once the referral triage is completed, the outcome is picked up by a digital worker and sent from Epic back into the ERS so that the GP remains informed about the patient’s care. What used to take a staff member eight to ten minutes to upload manually now takes a digital worker just four minutes — a 60% reduction in processing time.

Once the automations were up and running, the healthcare provider determined that they didn’t have internal resources to support the automations. Their clinical importance meant the automations had to function smoothly all day, every day. So, they asked the SS&C Blue Prism professional services team to stay on and provide continued service to maintain and operate the automations.

What's next?

The healthcare provider will use their digital workforce in an advice and guidance (A&G) process, ensuring all A&G communications sit within the Epic patient record. Digital workers will extract and update the ERS and communicate with the GPs, avoiding unnecessary outpatient appointments. They also plan to introduce their digital workers to the HR and data validation teams.