In today’s healthcare industry, the pathway to financial viability for hospitals and health systems is riddled with obstacles. These include a shortage of experienced employees, overburdened internal teams, and skyrocketing costs that are projected to rise throughout the remainder of the decade. Clear opportunities to streamline processes, optimize staff, and tap into a more robust revenue stream are few and far between, yet finding these avenues is a critical mandate for today’s healthcare leaders.
Automating testing for EHR, third-party, and enterprise applications is a transformative step that delivers undeniable ROI results to health systems and hospitals, with the significant added benefit of freeing internal IT teams to focus on higher-level tasks. Historically, manual testing has been the primary methodology for EHR testing, but it is highly time-consuming, prone to human error, and limits internal analysts from addressing more complex issues.
Furthermore, getting bogged down in manual testing, which is virtually inevitable, damages the efficiency of a healthcare organization and diminishes employee morale – imagine waking up to do manual testing all day.
Test automation is an advanced solution that overcomes the limitations of manual testing, providing healthcare organizations with both immediate and long-term ROI.
Making the Case for Test Automation: Your Complete Guide
Our white paper, New Operational Efficiencies & Remarkable ROI through Test Automation, details how test automation can drive operational efficiencies, enhance staff morale, minimize human error in the testing process, and provide a much-needed ROI boost for healthcare organizations.
We examined the manual testing activity of fourteen health systems and discovered some eye-opening results.
Why Manual Testing Falls Short
We found that, on average, health systems spend almost 25,000 hours per year manually testing EHRs and other systems before implementing test automation. Not only is that an overwhelmingly inefficient use of time and resources, but it also lends itself to other significant drawbacks, including the following:
Staff Burnout: With manual testing, IT teams spend a tremendous amount of time trying to keep up with updates from vendors like Epic and Cerner, as well as internal changes from their own clinical teams. There’s little time to take on more strategic initiatives, which can be detrimental to both organizational progress and employee morale.
Human Error: With the constant churn of testing, mistakes are inevitable. These testing errors can have significant, if not catastrophic, consequences for a healthcare organization, potentially compromising patient safety, operational workflows, and revenue cycle performance.
Stagnation: With so much time, energy, and resources dedicated to manual testing, it’s virtually impossible to deploy existing staff to take on new, forward-thinking initiatives.
The Advantage of Automating
SureTest provides a fully managed testing solution, overseeing all aspects of an organization’s EHR testing process. Not only does this create massive time savings for the organization, but it also reduces the potential for testing errors, allowing IT teams to operate at the top of their credentials instead of being bogged down with countless hours of laborious testing.
SureManage™, SureTest’s fully managed test automation solution, eliminates up to 80% or more of manual testing activities for our hospital and health system partners.
The SureManage solution returns an average of 19,000 annual work hours that can be redirected elsewhere.
Immediate and Sustainable ROI
One of the most compelling arguments for automating EHR testing, among many others, is its nearly immediate return on investment (ROI).
Results Right Away: Many health systems achieve a positive ROI within the first year of implementing our managed test automation solution.
Long-Term Gains: Health systems utilizing SureManage have achieved a return on investment (ROI) of up to 200% over a three-year period. On average, the 14 health systems SureTest studied would realize a $2,960,000 3-year ROI with our solution.
Labor Savings: Automation offsets the need for hiring additional employees. After implementing test automation, the 14 health systems will save by not having to hire 9 FTEs.
What makes test automation even more appealing is that it doesn’t require a lot of time, resources, or upheaval to deploy. SureManage requires just 50-60 hours over a six-month timeframe to implement, and as covered above, returns are almost immediate, supporting a smooth and hassle-free transition from manual testing.
A Modern-Day Solution
Maintaining the status quo, as it relates to the manual testing of EHR, third-party, and enterprise applications, is neither practical nor profitable for healthcare organizations. Automating application testing processes isn’t just a way to cut costs – although significant savings are a major benefit – it’s a way for organizations to improve their operations with more efficiency, revenue, and an optimized and energized staff.
For a deeper exploration of the benefits and potential of automated testing, including the real-world results SureTest delivered to Novant Health after automating their testing, download our white paper, New Operational Efficiencies & Remarkable ROI through Test Automation.
Download the white paper: https://suretest.health/resources/new-operational-efficiencies-remarkable-roi/