December 30, 2021

Quantifying the financial benefits of automating point-of-care testing

When purchasing products to automate processes the operational benefits are often obvious: improved staff morale, less manual errors, decreased repeat…

When purchasing products to automate processes the operational benefits are often obvious: improved staff morale, less manual errors, decreased repeat testing, etc. But we often get asked about how these benefits affect the bottom line. 

Return on investment (ROI) is used to measure the profitability of an expenditure. For an investment such as software, it is calculated by figuring out where you have increased revenue due to implementing the new software solution. We want to split ROI down into two categories: hard ROI and soft ROI. 

Hard ROI

The benefits of hard ROI are tangible, with a clear path to a corresponding monetary value. Some examples are:

  • Regained wasted staff time 
  • Revenue added through seeing additional patients
  • Capturing previously missed lab test billing

Soft ROI

The benefits of soft ROI are more difficult to calculate as they aren’t tied directly to a monetary value but they are still just as important for long term financial wellbeing. Some examples are:

  • Increased patient satisfaction scores leading to increased patient retention
  • Higher quality of care leading to improved quality incentives
  • Improved quality documentation leading to avoiding fines from regulatory agencies

It’s these two categories together that make up the financial benefits of automating laboratory practices. 

The Big Questions

When looking at automating some of your processes within your lab, consider the following:

  • Are members of staff utilized efficiently?
  • Are providers experiencing too many delays?
  • Is the practice seeing as many patients each day as you wish it was?
  • Are patients having an optimum healthcare experience? 
  • Are your records accurate and complete?
  • Do you bill properly for 100% of lab tests?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you will see ROI by automating your lab testing processes. 

Increased revenues through automation can be realized through hard ROI, such as improving staff efficiency to give more time for additional patients and increasing billing accuracy, and soft ROI such as increased satisfaction leading to better patient retention.

There are many sources of value to be found by automating your point-of-care process. It is likely that your practice experiences several of these difficulties in running point-of-care testing. Even if you only identify with one of them, there’s still a tangible ROI to be achieved by automating point-of-care.

Want to know how? Give us a shout!

Further Reading

You may also be interested in one of the following articles.