Mercy Radiology reaps benefits from first virtual worker in joint project with Kiwi company Virtual

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New Zealand healthcare provider Mercy Radiology and Clinics has lowered processing time and error rates in its ACC invoicing and receipting thanks to a virtual worker created by Kiwi company Virtual Blue.

Matilda, who works alongside the existing finance team at Mercy Radiology, was created using robotic process automation – a technology that provides ‘software robots’ to perform repetitive, monotonous tasks, freeing up human workers to focus on value-creating tasks.  

Dr Lloyd McCann, Mercy Radiology and Clinics CEO and Head of Digital Health for parent company Healthcare Holdings Limited, says Matilda has had a positive impact on the organisation’s cash flow, moving what was a weekly process to be a daily process but is also having a positive impact on patient outcomes. 

“At a macro level, we see RPA as having an immediate impact on the cost component of the equation, but what we found – literally within weeks of Matilda going live – is that the time that people now have freed up can be spent on value-added activities,” he says.  

“It’s not that an ACC receipting and invoicing process isn’t essential, it’s just that people’s time is better spent interacting with other people so that those all of our teams have better interactions with patients.” 

ACC is invoiced for patient scans and tests covered as part of ACC claims, with Mercy Radiology paid directly by ACC. Payment is made once Mercy Radiology uploads the ACC invoices to the ACC site and the claim has been accepted by ACC and all relevant processes have been completed.

Under the manual process, one of Mercy Radiology’s finance team was required to upload the information weekly to ACC. Once ACC has approved the invoice they send back the remit, with Mercy’s team then going through the receipting process of receiving the payment through the system.

Matilda’s development came as Mercy Radiology was experiencing high growth and is part of the organisation’s workforce strategy, as well as its digital transformation plans.

“Given that we are growing rapidly, either increase FTEs or we invest in RPA,” McCann says. RPA has given Mercy Radiology the opportunity to expand its ‘workforce’ without the need to accommodate additional people in an office already bursting at the seams, while also avoiding the costs involved with adding staff, including computers, phones and desks.

Sam Osborne, Virtual Blue managing director says RPA, which was once the domain only of large enterprises with deep pockets, has now become an affordable option for Kiwi businesses.

“Undoubtedly the first RPA adopters would have significantly invested in their programs based on a few key factors. What we’re trying to do is prove is that this technology for is definitely a reasonable cost option.”

Sylvia Young, Mercy Radiology finance manager, says having Matilda as part of the team has released other team members from monotonous tasks and enabled them to address other issues, while also relieving some of the pressure they were under from high workloads and increasing their job satisfaction.

The 10 per cent reduction in error rates was partially enabled due to the time released back to the team to work on training frontline users, with two staff previously responsible for ACC invoicing and receipting running a training team.

Mercy Radiology plans to extend RPA further across its business and the wider HHL business.

“This is at the forefront of what we need to be doing for healthcare, whether private or public, because there are thousands of processes across health that could be automated,” says McCann.

“If you think about the ability to release time so that when someone turns up at an emergency department or a hospital someone can spend time talking to them, rather than worrying about paperwork, that’s a great outcome.”

Source: Mercy Radiology and Clinics and Virtual Blue media release, 21 August 2019

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