IDP Healthcare Advantages and Disadvantages

Intelligent data processing in healthcare could be vital to eliminating data entry and streamlining data collection. But does it live up to its promise? Let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages of IDP in healthcare.

What is Intelligent Data Processing (IDP) in Healthcare?

Intelligent document processing (IDP) is an artificial intelligence technology that can automate healthcare data processing and eliminate manual data entry. Hospitals store data across various systems, including EHRs, EMRs, marketing tools, and ERPs. While some of this data is structured, most of it is not. Most experts estimate that 80% of healthcare data – physician notes, x-rays, and clinical summaries – is unstructured. Manually transcribing that data is incredibly time-consuming and increases the risk of data entry errors.

On the other hand, IDP automates data extraction from these sources, making it easier for hospitals to keep up with vital patient records, marketing information, and more.

What is IDP in Healthcare Used For?

IDP in healthcare is used for a variety of everyday tasks and processes. Let’s dive into the details.

Patient Records Management

Managing patient records effectively is critical for every hospital, and not just from a compliance perspective…it significantly impacts patient experience, service delivery, and health outcomes. So, how can IDP help? By automating the extraction and relocation of unstructured data from a variety of sources, including:

• Discharge notes
• Medical histories
• Test results
• Care plans
• Lab results

By bringing this information together in one location, IDP creates a more complete patient profile that helps care providers treat and support patients more effectively.

Safeguarding Regulatory Compliance

IDP ensures that patient data is structured and accessible for quality assurance and fraud prevention reports, preventing negligence in care services or creating billing transparency. It can also check to ensure that treatments are necessary. This accessible data compilation strategy makes it easier for hospitals to keep up with patient care requirements and remain in line with compliance standards.

Billing and Invoicing

IDP can help extract data from:

• Clinical notes
• Claims forms
• Operative reports
• Discharge summaries

This information paints a complete picture of the patient, helping providers reduce eligibility-based claim denials. Additionally, extracted information can be used to create superbills by assembling patient data, visit details, CPT codes, and ICD codes, which can provide patients, insurance companies, and providers with more information in one convenient location.

Prescription Management

To get the best patient outcomes, care providers must keep up with all prescriptions given to a patient. IDP can help by extracting data from handwritten prescriptions or images of digital prescriptions to ensure all prescription details are on the patient record, reducing the odds of medication interactions or errors.

Medical Imaging Reporting

IDP can extract information from flat medical images like x-rays and ultrasounds to ensure data is integrated with the patient's profile for access and assessment. That means fewer missing records and easier management of all of the patient's care.

The Advantages of Healthcare IDP

IDP brings several key advantages that can reduce errors and decrease overall costs. Let's dive into the specifics.

Improved Efficiency

IDP eliminates manual transcription across document types, ensuring that information is readily available where and when needed. It also eliminates manual data categorization since it can automatically determine where data needs to go.

Decreased Errors

With IDP, you can eliminate errors from manual data entry. This improves both patient record accuracy and billing information. Furthermore, these accurate records allow auditing that enhances compliance with medical regulations like HIPAA.

Reduced Labor Costs

IDP's automation can help reduce labor costs or time, allowing your office professionals to focus on other vital tasks.

Better Patient Care

IDP for heatlhcare can go a long way toward improving the overall patient experience. It allows for faster service when patients visit medical care providers and streamlines patient onboarding from referrals. Furthermore, it leads to more efficient pre-authorizations with speedier document processing. That can mean substantially increased patient satisfaction and convenience.

Potential Challenges of Healthcare IDP

Data Security

Data security is a crucial concern for many hospitals, particularly with the increase in cyberattacks over the past several years. Hospitals must ensure that extracted data is transferred and stored in systems that comply with HIPAA and other regulations. You will need your IDP solution to include encryption, access controls, and IDP guardrails that prevent access to specific systems. In addition, your solution must have clear security protocols and consistent audits, all of which will help protect organizational security.

User Adoption

Many users will be slow to adopt any new system, and IDP is no different. You need a solid training process to teach staff how to use the new IDP technologies instead of their former manual processes.

Upfront Costs

IDP technology can have a high upfront cost. However, remember that the efficiencies gained save in the long run. Run a cost-benefit analysis considering the existing workforce, time spent manually extracting data, and the cost of entry errors. Then, compare it to the implementation cost of the IDP solution and the ongoing subscription cost to determine the best solution for your healthcare organization.

Scalability

Carefully consider the scalability of your IDP solution. Without the right technology and implementation, IDP may not scale with new platforms or increasing amounts of data, making it more difficult for your healthcare organization to continue to use those solutions in the future.

Handling Unstructured Data

Some industry-specific IDP solutions struggle to interpret unstructured healthcare data in physician notes, audio files, diagnoses, and discharge notes. The IDP solution must have the natural language processing appropriately configured to integrate into a structured model. If a IDP solution isn’t healthcare focused, it may not work for the specific needs of hospitals.

Data Quality

IDP in healthcare requires clean source data. Garbage in, garbage out applies here, and the quality of unstructured healthcare data should be assessed before extracting and importing to patient records.

The Major Players in Healthcare IDP

Mulesoft

Mulesoft is our preferred IDP healthcare solutions because of its integration with the Anypoint Platform, RPA, and Flow. These integrations make it easier to build scalable platforms that integrate with a hospital’s healthcare tech stack, like EHRs, EMRs, marketing systems, Salesforce Clouds, and more. Additionally, pre-built templates reduce the need for coding or technical skills to automate extraction from new documents or platforms.

Microsoft

Microsoft Syntex is an AI-powered service that integrates content stored across Microsoft 365. It allows easy document classification and enables users to extract content from invoices, receipts, and other documents. It allows for the custom creation of AI models that can extract data from fields, checkmarks, and other sources. In addition, it can quickly add extracted data to Sharepoint libraries.

Adobe

Adobe's document intelligence solutions integrate natural language understanding, document imaging analysis, and human-computer action to extract data from various sources, including many of those used by the medical profession. Adobe's IDP solutions also allow for more straightforward navigation across extensive document collections, providing the solutions needed to enhance healthcare transparency.

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere has IDP solutions designed to streamline document storage, digitize physical documents for ease of use, and quickly assemble and extract data. It simplifies data entry processes and integrates with a variety of other solutions.

Workfusion

Workfusion offers a unified platform that combines core automation capabilities, including automated extraction and structuring of document-based data alongside solutions designed to push that data to the correct locations. It offers pre-built solutions alongside custom options that provide versatile data entry automation.

HCL Technologies

HCLTech iDoRAN is a holistic document automation solution designed to accelerate digital transformation. It can automatically extract around 95% of data without human input, which can streamline the data extraction process and lead to high accuracy. With an 80% reduction in manual data processing efforts, it brings a high level of efficiency to its hospitals.

Hyland Software

Hyland IDP integrates with various ECM and process automation platforms, including over 500 applications. It is a highly scalable, flexible model with an intuitive web interface that makes learning and adapting to this platform easy.

IBM

IBM's Automation Document Processing solution is designed to quickly process large volumes of unstructured data. It allows for fast adaptation due to AI, with powerful transformative applications and a quicker return on investment. IBM CloudPak for Business Automation also offers several other essential solutions to get your healthcare organization running more effectively.

Make Your Data Actionable with Healthcare IDP

In the modern age, your healthcare organization must process information more efficiently than ever. IDP streamlines data transcription and collection, improving efficiency and reducing errors caused by manual data entry. Take the transformative step of adding IDP to your healthcare tech stack today.