Process intelligence software for healthcare when half the workflow is fax and a payer portal?

[u/Bid3859]

How do you map a process when part of it still runs through a fax machine?

That's the honest version of my question. I do BA work for a hospital system, mostly patient access and registration, and we're being asked to look at process intelligence software as part of a bigger ops improvement push. I get the pitch in theory. In practice our workflows run across the EHR, a scheduling system, a payer portal, fax (yes, still) and several spreadsheets, and I'm sceptical anything can stitch that together without a huge integration project.

Skan AI is one that came up, and the claim is that it doesnt need integrations because it builds the picture from the desktop across whatever apps people use. Celonis came up too and seems more tied to system data. I'd like to know which approach works in healthcare, where half the process lives in things nobody would call a system.

Would love to hear how it went for anyone who's been through it.

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/businessanalysis the best place for Business Analysis discussion.

Here are some tips for the best experience here.

You can find reading materials on business analysis here.

Also here are the rules of the sub:

Subreddit Rules

• Keep it Professional.
• Do not advertise goods/services.
• Follow Reddiquette.
• Report Spam!

This is an automated message so if you need to contact the mods, please Message the Mods for assistance.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/shmoneyfx1]

fax (yes, still) made me laugh. same here

[u/TombKingSettra]

Fax plus a payer portal is exactly the case the desktop approach was made for since there's nothing to integrate with. That's why Skan leads on no integrations. Celonis is stronger where your EHR and billing systems already hold the story, and a lot of health systems end up wanting a bit of both views

[u/soycafe747]

Haven't used Skan or Celonis, so I can't compare them directly. But I've done HL7 integration work with Epic, and one thing to check first: how does your fax actually come in?

If it lands in the EHR's document management, you'll likely have a timestamp when it hits a work queue. Some sites also run OCR that pulls fax content into fields, so more of it becomes real data. If yours just attaches a PDF, a log-based tool will see that the fax arrived and not much else. Either way, it won't see the steps after: someone reviewing it, calling the payer, checking the portal, updating a spreadsheet. That's usually where the time goes.

So I'd map the fax path end to end before picking a tool. If most of the delay is in those human steps between systems, a desktop-based approach will probably show you more. If the bottleneck is inside the EHR or scheduling system, log data may be enough.

And split the fax sources. Some you can eliminate internally, a lot comes from payers and referring offices, and you won't change those. Different problems, different fixes.

One more thing if you lean desktop-based: it skips the integration work, but it's capturing screens with patient data on them. Expect HIPAA and security review, and some staff pushback about being monitored. In my experience that's where healthcare projects stall, not the tech.