During a run last night in San Francisco, I listened to a recent Wall Street Journal podcast, "To Solve Labor Shortage, Companies Turn to Automation." I learned that while employers are eager to hire more workers, the labor force itself has shrunken. In fact, the labor force participation rate is the smallest it's been in 40 years. Furthermore, economists expected 500,000 new jobs to be created in the U.S. in September. The actual number, however, was only 194,000. That's only 38.8% of what was forecast. With so fewer people searching for jobs, especially in healthcare (we'll get to that shortly), employers are struggling to find ways to achieve more with less (headcount). The objective of this post is to explain how workflow automation via HIPAA compliant email can help healthcare organizations achieve greater efficiency.
First, let's look at why millions of Americans are continuing to stay out of the workforce even as we emerge from the pandemic:
Even before the pandemic, we knew the healthcare industry workforce was growing at double-digit rates. During the pandemic, however, demand for healthcare labor skyrocketed as droves of temp workers were needed to meet demand (people showing up at hospitals sick with COVID). Now many of those temp workers are in demand elsewhere. Exacerbating this trend: Of those that choose to stay home to care for their children, the majority of them are women. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 76% of healthcare workers are women. The math is simple: Any industry dominated by women is now even more understaffed than industries dominated by men.
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a type of workflow automation that uses software robots to ease routine office work. According to Gartner, the RPA market is expected to grow by double digits through 2024. Gartner also predicts global revenue in the sector will reach $1.89 billion this year, up nearly 20% from last year.
It's precisely this type of workflow automation that allows healthcare organizations to do more with reduced headcount. Yet when it comes to HIPAA compliance, both covered entities and business associates must carefully choose vendors to work with. Ideally, these organizations want to work with vendors whose solutions are HITRUST CSF certified.
See Related: Is UiPath HIPAA compliant?
See Related: Paubox renews, expands HITRUST CSF certification through 2023
I'm pleased to say our solutions at Paubox are HITRUST CSF Certified:
In addition, we've already seen with HIPAA compliant voicemail transcription that it's possible to securely use email for workflow automation. We are currently working with our customers to deploy more workflow automation robots using Email AI. We are certainly looking forward to providing them with even greater value in these uncertain times.
See Also: Email AI: an evolving guide