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Manual workflows continue to dominate many healthcare operations. From appointment scheduling and patient information intake to billing and insurance processing, these tasks often happen on spreadsheets, paper forms, and siloed CRMs.
Such a setup works when the scale is small.
However, this isn’t the case when a hospital or clinic is managing hundreds of patients, multiple departments, and increasing compliance demands. The end result of this? Physicians spend nearly 15.5 hours per week on administrative tasks.
Staffing shortages exacerbate this issue, with burnout rates among medical residents ranging from 27% to 75% across various medical subspecialties. No wonder healthcare workflow automation is gaining precedence.
Tools built on low-code/no-code (LCNC) platforms enable the quick digitization and connection of workflows without the overhead of full-scale development. At Intuz, we work with healthcare providers like you to deliver bespoke clinical workflow automation solutions.
If you’re in a similar boat and are looking to improve care delivery and internal efficiency, this blog is for you. As a healthcare workflow automation expert, we’ve identified the most time-consuming workflows that need to be automated, stat.
Top 7 Most Time-Consuming Healthcare Workflows to Automate
1. Patient appointment scheduling and reminders
The front-desk staff historically spend significant time coordinating calendars, responding to reschedule requests over the phone or via email, and sending follow-up reminders. Most of these tasks can be automated. Imagine handling upwards of 100 incoming calls a day!
LCNC tools enable you to create rules-based workflows without requiring custom development. Here’s what you can do:
- Embed forms or conversational bots on your hospital or clinic site or patient portal that collect availability, symptoms, and preferred time slots. LCNC platforms, such as Zoho Creator or OutSystems, can help with configuration.
- Sync appointment slots with existing calendar systems, such as Google Calendar or Outlook, to prevent double bookings and automatically surface available time slots.
- Send SMS, WhatsApp, or email reminders 24-48 hours before appointments.
Pro Tip:
When building appointment flows, we always recommend tracking the reasons for cancellations and reschedules. Over time, this data can help you identify patterns, such as peak no-show times or providers with scheduling bottlenecks.
2. Patient intake and digital forms
Patients sometimes fill out forms by hand, which the staff then re-enters into the Electronic Health Record (EHR). This wastes time and increases the risk of transcription mistakes.
Additionally, the documentation process contributes to nurses’ workloads, accounting for approximately 15% of their shifts. Here’s how you can digitize the intake process, integrating it with your systems:
- Build secure, mobile-friendly forms using LCNC platforms like Jotform Enterprise, Nintex, or Airtable with HIPAA configurations that capture patient demographics, medical history, and consent in advance.
- Configure workflows where a submitted form:
- Creates or updates a patient profile → syncs directly to your EHR → triggers pre-visit instructions or alerts to staff
- Add file upload fields for documents and use optical character recognition (OCR) tools to extract and validate insurance or ID data.
Pro Tip:
We advise using expiring, tokenized form links instead of login-based portals. It keeps the intake process secure, but is far more patient-friendly, especially for first-time visitors accessing forms via mobile devices.
Also Read: A Complete Guide to Generative AI in Healthcare
3. Insurance eligibility verification and claims status
Manually checking insurance eligibility delays patient onboarding and introduces friction into your billing process. Staff have to log in to multiple payer portals, make phone calls, or wait for faxed responses. Here’s how LCNC tools come into play:
- They connect directly with insurance clearing houses and APIs (e.g., Availity, Change Healthcare), which allow you to verify a patient’s coverage status and benefits in seconds.
- Next, you can set up workflows to notify billing teams or providers when a claim is approved, denied, or delayed. Notifications can be sent via email, Slack, or even in-app dashboards used in your clinic or hospital.
- Route denied or pending claims automatically to the right team for follow-ups based on the denial reason, payer, or service type.
By applying healthcare process automation to insurance workflows, you increase cash flow visibility and reduce the time staff spend on back-office tasks.
Pro Tip:
For multi-location practices, we often cache payer responses temporarily, so your front desk doesn’t have to reverify the same insurance data within 24–48 hours. It speeds things up without compromising accuracy.
Fact:
The U.S. healthcare industry was able to save $20 billion annually by fully automating administrative transactions, such as eligibility verifications, claims, and prior authorizations. — 2024 CAQH Index
4. Lab test orders and result notifications
Lab testing is crucial for accurate diagnosis and timely care. Yet, scheduling and reminders are often managed through manual handoffs, phone calls, or disconnected systems. This increases the chance of lost requests and slows down clinical decision-making.
With healthcare workflow automation using LCNC tools, you can build systems that automatically generate lab orders based on provider inputs or clinical rules:
- Selecting a diagnosis code in the EHR can initiate a lab request and route it to the appropriate lab system or partner.
- Once results are received, configure the system to deliver them securely to patients via email or patient portals, and notify relevant care team members for review.
- Create conditional logic that flags critical or abnormal values and alerts the ordering physician or nursing staff. This ensures high-priority results get immediate follow-up.
Clinical workflow automation in this area shortens diagnostic cycles, improves patient communication, and enhances continuity of care, without increasing the workload of extra staff.
Pro Tip:
A common issue we see is labs failing to send back results. We build a “no result received” fallback, which alerts your staff automatically if nothing comes in after a set time. No more chasing missing reports manually.
Also Read: Applications of Al Predictive Analytics in Healthcare
5. E-prescription reminders and refill alerts
Missed medications are a common issue across outpatient care, especially for patients with chronic conditions. Manual reminder systems, if they exist at all, depend on staff availability or basic calendar tools. This increases the risk of readmission and lost pharmacy revenue.
Automation in healthcare enables the delivery of timely, personalized refill reminders without manual tracking. With LCNC tools, you can:
- Set up recurring, rules-based reminders based on prescription date, dosage duration, or medication type, prompting patients days before they run out.
- Allow patients to confirm or request refills through an automated response system, reducing inbound calls and shortening the refill cycle.
- Integrate with pharmacy databases or internal stock systems to verify availability, ensuring that medicines are consistently stocked at optimal levels.
Pro Tip:
For chronic care workflows, we include a “decline refill” action in reminders. It helps patients feel more in control and flags your care team early if someone has stopped taking their meds.
6. Post-visit follow-ups and feedback collection
What happens when a patient leaves your facility? Communication breaks down unless your front desk staff initiates follow-ups on their own. This is an integral part of the job, as outpatient follow-up visits are associated with a 21% lower risk of readmission.
With healthcare workflow automation, you can ensure timely post-visit engagement:
- Trigger NPS, CSAT, or custom experience surveys immediately after appointments or discharges with tools like Typeform, Google Forms (with HIPAA compliance layers), or SurveyMonkey integrated using LCNC logic.
- Automatically prompt patients to book follow-up visits, schedule lab tests, or review care instructions directly with you based on diagnosis codes or treatment plans.
- Use conditional logic to flag low scores or negative comments, alerting the operations or quality team for investigation or escalation.
Pro Tip:
We recommend tagging feedback to individual providers or service lines. Over time, this provides a clear view of where patient experience is strong and where it needs improvement without adding manual review steps.
7. Inventory alerts for medicines and supplies
Stockouts of essential items, such as PPE, test kits, and medications, not only impact patient care but also result in compliance violations and workflow disruptions. Manual inventory tracking, done via Excel or periodic checks, can’t keep pace with real-time demands.
Ultimately, your frontline teams must always have the necessary tools to deliver care. Healthcare process automation enables you to monitor usage and respond proactively to potential issues before they arise. Here’s what you can automate:
- Utilize LCNC tools to track real-time inventory usage tied to patient visits, laboratory activity, or prescriptions.
- Configure workflows that trigger alerts when critical items fall below defined minimums. Notifications can be routed to procurement or supply chain teams via email, SMS, or dashboard updates.
- Connect to supplier systems or utilize webhook-based triggers to generate purchase requests or restock notifications automatically.
Pro Tip:
We’ve seen real success with barcode-based inventory tracking tied to usage workflows. It takes staff less time to log stock changes, and gives procurement teams cleaner, real-time data to work with.
Why Healthcare Companies Choose Intuz for Healthcare Workflow Automation
There’s no dearth of healthcare workflow automation tools you can deploy on your own. But doing that requires more than a technical solution. You need a partner who understands your clinical, operational, and compliance landscape.
Intuz brings deep experience as a healthcare workflow automation expert, helping hospitals, clinics, and digital health platforms streamline operations through scalable and user-friendly systems. We understand what it takes to build workflows tailored to your specific requirements.
Here’s how we work:
- We first sit down with you to identify high-friction processes, gaps in visibility, and opportunities for automation. Our structured consulting framework includes:
- Workflow audits across scheduling, intake, billing, care delivery, and follow-ups
- Risk assessment for compliance, redundancy, and manual error
- Prioritization based on business impact and technical readiness
- Based on your existing infrastructure, security needs, and scale requirements, we create automation workflows using the most LCNC tools. Some of the platforms we consult and build with include Microsoft Power Automate (formerly PowerApps), Zoho Creator, OutSystems. Make, n8n, and Zapier are workflow automation tools we specialize in.
- Where applicable, Intuz integrates AI tools to improve accuracy further and reduce manual review, such as OCR, NLP-based chatbots, and predictive logic. Our team ensures AI apps are explainable, secure, and compliant with healthcare standards.
- Using LCNC development methods, Intuz delivers and iterates on automation workflows within days or weeks. Our agile delivery model includes:
“Whether you’re focused on reducing administrative overhead, improving care coordination, or scaling your operations, you can count on Intuz.
We’ll not only evaluate and deploy the right platform based on your requirements, budget, flexibility, data privacy, and integration capabilities but also make sure it continues delivering you the ROI you deserve throughout its lifecycle,” says Harsh Bhatt, Workflow Automation Expert.
Want to learn more about our custom AI solutions?
Book a consultation with Intuz to identify the right starting point and explore how low-code/no-code automation can work for your team.
