Repetitive administration tasks are one of the greatest killers of productivity — and they could be impacting your patient experiences more than you realize. In this blog, we highlight 7 of the most common bureaucracy problems in healthcare and explain how technology can help you erase them.
Scheduling patient appointments and jotting down observation notes may seem like small, harmless tasks in isolation. But they quickly add up. 30 minutes of admin work can easily roll into 3 hours without you even noticing. And that’s time you can’t get back.
This is the reality of bureaucracy in healthcare — and it’s a problem faced by teams across the globe.
In the US, clinicians spend a staggering 28 hours of their working week on administrative tasks. This number jumps to 34-36 hours for medical office and claims staff.
This is about more than just inefficiency. If left unchecked, these administrative burdens can exacerbate staff burnout — something 82% of clinicians currently struggle with — and negatively impact patient care.
Fortunately, these problems aren’t unsolvable. With the right technology in place, you can streamline processes and improve experiences for clinicians and patients alike.
With that in mind, here are 7 common bureaucracy problems in healthcare and how you can eradicate them.
According to a recent UK government publication, “duplicative efforts to collect information about a patient’s condition accounts for a third of clinical time.”
As we’ve already established: note-taking is a time killer. But with the proliferation of AI technologies, healthcare professionals can free themselves of this inefficient task.
With ambient AI or voice-to-text software, you can capture patient notes without lifting a single finger. This doesn’t just save time – it allows your clinicians to be more attentive during patient-facing appointments.
Summarizing patient visits and discharges is another cumbersome admin task for healthcare professionals. (And it leads on nicely from our point above.)
Instead of reading through pages of notes and typing summaries by hand, use AI to summarize the information for you.
For example, Claromentis’ Document Management application contains an intelligent AI assistant that ingests each document, answers user questions, and surfaces important information. Simply ask the bot a question, and it’ll direct you to the relevant sentence or paragraph.
Clinicians can also harness AI tools to generate summaries on their behalf. Though we advise reading through these outputs thoroughly to ensure there are no errors.
For some organizations, booking a simple patient appointment can take multiple staff members and a lot of wrangling — particularly when it’s all handled manually.
To avoid time wasted sitting by the phone, we’d advise building automated appointment workflows instead.
To illustrate what we mean, here’s how we’d handle the process using Claromentis’ integrated business process automation software:
There’s no waiting on hold or time wasted travelling to a fully-booked GP surgery. Just efficient, accountable automations that keep patients and clinicians aligned.
Tip: You can also use automations to build out convenient self-referral services. This gives patients the ability to instantly book appointments with internal or external providers — whether it’s to organize their annual flu jab or seek mental health support.
You should never phase out letters completely. Some patients prefer this mode of communication. Others simply don’t have the access to — or the desire to use — digital services.
That being said, there’s no denying the cost and inefficiency of paper-based communications. Beyond the time spent wrangling with the office printer, you also have to face the fact that postal services aren’t always reliable. Mail can very easily get lost, both inside and outside of your patients’ homes. And this may result in them missing important appointment reminders, blood test results, and more.
That’s why it’s crucial to implement digital modes of contact wherever possible. By using healthcare apps or online platforms, you can guarantee patients receive important medical communications — even if they choose to open your postal letters instead.
To reduce the administrative burden on your office teams, we’d recommend creating ‘opt out’ workflows for your more digitally-savvy patients. Similar to paperless banking, this gives them the choice to receive digital communications only — in turn, saving your admins teams time and money.
Arranging in-person pre-assessments to investigate patient concerns, check BMI, and ask for medical history information can be a waste of clerical resources. By the time you organize the appointment, take notes, and re-organize a follow-up, you’ve already used up hours of productivity.
Instead, send your patients digital pre-assessment forms that they can fill out in the comfort of their own home. You’ll receive the same context as you would during an in-person assessment, only now without the bureaucratic burden.
HIPAA audits require evidence of compliance, including proof of employee training, data protection frameworks, policy implementation and acknowledgement, audit logs, and disaster recovery plans.
For organizations without any automated mechanisms in place, compiling this information can be a time consuming and frustrating process. One that could result in non-compliance if you fail to find the right documents in time.
To simplify evidence collection throughout the year, we recommend:
With a comprehensive digital workplace solution like Claromentis, you can centralize all this information in one hub, as well as access clear audit logs for each application. This enables you to keep consistent records of compliance for HIPAA, ISO, and any other regulatory framework.
On any given day, your healthcare staff need to access a number of disparate platforms, including your Electronic Health Records (EHRs) or Single Patient Records (SPR), telemedicine portal, appointment scheduling and triage software, digital workplace and intranet, and LMS.
This requires logging into each platform with a strong password and providing additional authentication via an app or device. And therein is where the problem lies.
In the chaos and unpredictability of healthcare settings, it can be all too easy to forget these details. Leaving many members of staff with no choice but to call up your IT department and request help. This wastes time, impedes patient care, and distracts your IT teams from more pressing tasks.
The solution to this? Harness single-sign on (SSO). With SSO, you can ensure everyone can log into your tech stack safely and effortlessly. To take things a step further, we’d also recommend consolidating your tech stack wherever possible and integrating your disparate platforms. This doesn’t just ease administrative headaches — it can facilitate data interoperability and enhance compliance with regulations such as HIPAA.
Claromentis’ digital workplace for regulated industries can help with this. Our solution is packed full of features, including intranet, business process automation, e-learning, policy management, and knowledge sharing capabilities. With third-party integrations and custom APIs, you can integrate any of your external platforms. This enables you to refine your bloated tech stack and centralize your operations.
Bureaucracy in healthcare will always have its place. But it should never dominate clinician time.
After all, your staff want to focus on providing care and improving patient outcomes, not taking notes and organizing appointments.
So, if you’re ready to free yourself from the burden of bureaucracy, consider harnessing a solution like Claromentis. With our comprehensive digital workplace solution, you can:
To find out whether Claromentis is the right solution for your healthcare organization, book a 10-minute discussion call with us today. One of our experts will assess your requirements, discuss pricing plans, and take you on a personalized tour of the platform.