Summary
Hospitals often try to automate routine tasks to save time and money, but many efforts fail because they pick tasks randomly without a clear plan. The authors propose a step-by-step system that helps hospitals organize common tasks, decide which ones are best to automate, choose the right technology, and estimate the financial benefits before starting. They tested their method on example data and showed it can reliably find good automation opportunities and manage risks and budgets. Their work combines ideas from previous studies and includes a Python tool to help hospitals apply the system, though it still needs testing with real hospital data.
Robotic Process AutomationProcess TaxonomyAutomation Suitability IndexAnalytic Hierarchy ProcessTechnology TiersReturn on InvestmentMonte Carlo simulationHospital administrative processesBudget optimizationEHR integration
Abstract
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is widely used to reduce administrative burden in United States hospitals, yet an estimated 30-50% of RPA initiatives underperform because processes are selected informally, without a repeatable method to catalogue candidates, prioritize them, match each to an automation tier -- a Python bot, an open-source orchestrator such as n8n, or an enterprise platform such as UiPath -- and forecast financial return before committing resources. We propose a four-module, data-driven framework unifying these decisions: a Process Taxonomy of twenty recurring hospital processes across five value streams; a Prioritization module deriving an Automation Suitability Index from an Analytic Hierarchy Process matrix with an explicit consistency check; a Tool-Tier Selection module recommending the least-cost technology sufficient for a process complexity, integration, and compliance profile; and a Return-on-Investment module quantifying labor savings, error-cost avoidance, payback, and net present value. Applied to a synthetic portfolio spanning all twenty processes, plus a reference data-flow architecture linking it to hospital EHR/payer/ERP systems: 12 of 20 clear the prioritization threshold; the ranking is robust to +/-20% weight perturbation (Spearman correlation 0.83, top-5 set preserved 97.7%, 2,000 Monte Carlo trials); an Automation Risk Index flags four qualifying processes as Critical risk; a budget-constrained portfolio optimization shows diminishing marginal NPV as spend scales from $400K to $1.03M; and a second Monte Carlo analysis shows portfolio NPV stays positive at its 5th percentile. The framework is a conceptual synthesis of the literature rather than an instrument calibrated on primary hospital data; we discuss HIPAA governance and a research agenda for empirical validation. A supplementary Python implementation accompanies the paper.