Digital transformation efforts in healthcare are driving the demand for automation in revenue cycle operations, especially as organizations seek to efficiently capture revenue while lowering their cost to collect. Shifting business dynamics driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 have only intensified the need for automation as organizations face massive financial pressures while abruptly transitioning their teams to remote work. Social distancing practices have also made the ability to deploy new technology quickly and entirely remotely essential. 

The scale and scope of healthcare in the U.S. means automation tools have to handle massive complexity and constant change. 

Over the past two decades revenue cycle leaders have been forced to cobble together a patchwork of solutions that often don’t integrate with one another and only automate a portion of revenue cycle processes. Other general solutions, such as robotic process automation (RPA), may work for simple, discrete tasks, but often fail quickly in the highly complex and dynamic nature of healthcare. This leaves hospitals and health systems stuck with a trail of broken bots and blown budgets. In fact, a Forrester research report from July 2019 indicated that for every $1 spent on RPA technology, an additional $3.41 is spent on RPA bot creation and maintenance.