Addressing excessive administrative burden is an urgent priority for healthcare authorities across the globe. However, the software tools promoted as the solution, namely electronic medical records (EMRs) and artificial intelligence (AI), haven’t delivered the change required to bring the healthcare system back into balance.
At Cortico, we believe that automation—rather than simply streamlining inherently inefficient tasks—is the key to solving the administrative overload faced by modern providers. And in our experience, robotic process automation in healthcare is one of the safest, most effective ways to completely remove the tedious administrative tasks that drive burnout and increase operational costs.
In this article, we’ll provide a thorough overview of robotic process automation in healthcare, covering potential benefits, use cases, and an easily digestible explanation of how the technology works. We’ll also illustrate real-world examples of how Cortico has been used in clinics to improve outcomes for providers and patients.
To begin, let’s take a look at what robotic process automation in healthcare actually is.
What is Robotic Process Automation in Healthcare?
Robotic process automation (also known as RPA) involves a “robot” autonomously completing a task in the same way a human would. With robotic process automation in healthcare, the robot usually resides in a computing environment, such as a software tool or platform.
A good way to think about RPA in healthcare is any system where a robotic process (or “agent”) performs work a human clinician or administrative staff member would previously do. Examples of tasks commonly handled by healthcare RPA include appointment scheduling and reminders, patient registration and intake, processing incoming referrals, and prior authorization.
Robotic process automation in healthcare differs from artificial intelligence (AI), in that RPA follows a pre-defined workflow, whereas AI may independently analyze and act on data. This makes RPA inherently more predictable and reliable than AI, which is crucial for safety in medical settings.
Why We Need RPA for Healthcare
Healthcare’s administrative crisis has reached a breaking point.
The U.S. healthcare system hemorrhages approximately $1 trillion annually on administrative overhead—nearly a third of total healthcare spending. To put that in perspective, administrative costs in the U.S. exceed the entire healthcare budgets of most developed nations.
Other countries don’t fare much better. In Canada, the UK, and Australia, physicians report spending anywhere from 20% to 60% of their time on administrative tasks.
This dynamic has caused both a burnout and workforce retention crisis, with an accelerating trend of clinicians leaving practice faster than new graduates can be produced to take their place.
The EMR Problem
The last decade of EMR “advancements” are credited with actually increasing administrative burden. However, that doesn’t mean we’re about to see this technology retired.
We need a unifying information technology system to manage medical records. And trying to replace EMRs completely at this stage would be so resource-intensive that it could disrupt implementation of the two technologies with potential to finally make a real change in healthcare administrative burden: RPA and AI.
Isn’t AI Enough On Its Own?
Recently, artificial intelligence has been positioned as the next great hope for administrative relief in healthcare. Yet, most AI implementations have focused on clinical decision support or diagnostics, rather than the tedious, repetitive administrative tasks consuming a majority of staff time.
The AI tools that do target administrative work often require extensive customization, struggle with legacy system integration, and can create new technical debt rather than eliminating old burdens.
To be clear, we’re not anti-AI at Cortico. We utilize RPA and AI in healthcare in a range of our healthcare automation solutions (you can even check out this video to see some of our AI tools in action).
However, our experience is that relying on AI alone can repeat mistakes of previous initiatives that relied on technology to make broken processes more efficient, rather than eliminating them entirely.
In short, we believe that true healthcare workflow automation is where RPA for healthcare has potential to be fundamentally more impactful than previous technology waves.
Can RPA in Healthcare Fix “The EMR Problem?”
Healthcare as an industry is generally prone to legacy software systems remaining in use for many years longer than other sectors. For example, in 2025, healthcare RPA adoption sits at roughly 10%, while manufacturing is at 35% adoption.
The prototypical healthcare software system is the EMR (Electronic Medical Record). Many EMRs are multiple decades old, and vendors often struggle to keep these systems updated and performing optimally due to the critical nature and complexity of clinical use.
So, in an effort to add or improve these systems, we may want to pair specialized RPA apps with EMRs. In this context, you might think of RPA in the healthcare industry as a simple way to upgrade or enhance legacy EMR technology.
Robotic process automation can’t solve the EMR problem singlehandedly. However, as we’ll cover in the examples below, RPA for healthcare is arguably the most effective avenue for reducing the crippling administrative burden clinicians and administrators are struggling with today.
RPA Use Cases in Healthcare
RPA does have potential clinical applications. But at this point in time, the countless administrative tasks surrounding the care delivery process are the ideal focus for the technology.
As Dr. Andy Minhas, co-founder of Cortico states:
People often think of a doctor’s visit as just the doctor meeting a patient. Yet, there’s also insurance eligibility, reminders, intake forms, scheduling, instructions, medication delivery, and payments. All that is really what makes clinicians and administrative staff feel overwhelmed.
Here are some real-world examples of RPA in healthcare that illustrate how it can completely automate many of these time-consuming and resource-intensive tasks.
RPA Use Case 1 - Automated Patient Scheduling
TRADITIONAL PAIN POINTS
Healthcare organizations face a brutal arithmetic problem regarding scheduling. Each patient call consumes 3-5 minutes of staff time, followed by manual booking into a clinician’s calendar.
Medium-to-large clinics field hundreds of booking calls per day, often amounting to 40+ hours of staff time spent just on scheduling. Meanwhile, patients experience long hold times, restricted calling hours (typically business hours only), and the frustration of phone tag when they need to reschedule.
WHY RPA WORKS
Appointment scheduling is ideal for robotic process automation in healthcare because it involves:
- Highly structured data (patient ID, provider, time slot, appointment type)
- Clear business rules (provider availability, appointment durations, buffer times)
- Virtually no clinical risk (patients can be prompted to seek alternative care for urgent issues).
RPA can be used to give patients access to an intuitive online self-scheduling system that eliminates the need for a scheduling call entirely. Patients access real-time provider availability through online portals or mobile apps, select preferred time slots, and receive immediate confirmation—all without human intervention.
The healthcare RPA bot syncs the appointment directly to the EMR, updating provider schedules, triggering automated reminders, and initiating any required pre-visit workflows.
REAL WORLD RESULTS
Kensington Medical Clinic implemented Cortico’s automated patient scheduling software and cut daily call volumes from 800 to zero. This dramatic reduction freed reception staff to focus on in-person patient support, care coordination, and other high-value activities that actually improve patient experience rather than simply processing transactions.
Rather than building custom scheduling RPA from scratch (typically $15,000+ for EMR integration), healthcare organizations can deploy Cortico’s purpose-built patient scheduling solution.
The platform integrates seamlessly with leading EMR systems including Epic, Oracle Health, Oscar, and Accuro, providing automated appointment syncing, intelligent reminder workflows, and real-time schedule management—all with out-of-the-box HIPAA compliance.
Watch the video below to see how an automated patient self-scheduling system fits into a broader strategy to reduce costly no-shows.
RPA Use Case 2 - Streamlined Patient Intake and Registration
TRADITIONAL PAIN POINTS
Patients arrive at clinics 15-20 minutes early to complete lengthy paper intake forms, often with illegible handwriting that leads to errors. Front desk staff then spend 10-15 minutes per patient manually entering this information into the EMR (introducing another risk for errors).
Returning patients endure the frustration of re-entering identical information at every visit, while staff waste valuable time correcting mistakes, chasing missing fields, and managing paper storage. The bottleneck creates waiting room congestion that cascades through the entire day’s schedule.
WHY RPA WORKS
Registration and intake workflows are 85-95% automatable with robotic process automation in healthcare because they involve:
- Structured demographic data (name, date of birth, contact information)
- Insurance verification (which is largely already electronic)
- The collection of documents that the patient can upload digitally (referrals, test results, imaging, etc).
The purpose of this stage of the care journey is to organize information for efficient clinical review, meaning risk issues are low to non-existent. Furthermore, the data validation rules are clear, the volume is high, and the process follows predictable patterns ideal for automation.
Digital patient intake powered by RPA in healthcare allows patients to complete forms at home before their appointment. Some practices also utilize self-service medical clinic kiosks, giving patients who haven’t pre-completed their registration and intake an opportunity to do this electronically in the clinic.
Healthcare RPA-powered digital intake and registration systems can validate data in real-time (ensuring required fields are complete, insurance information is formatted correctly), sync directly with the EMR, and pre-populate fields using existing patient data or referral information.
REAL WORLD RESULTS
Dr. Sarah Baldwin utilized Cortico to automate patient intake and registration processes in her dermatology-focused practice.
With our AI-enabled RPA document triaging tool, all incoming information, such as referrals, lab work, pharmacy requests, and consult notes are automatically named, categorized, and added to the EMR, with demographics and other pertinent information pre-populated into charts. This single feature alone saved Dr. Baldwin’s MOA 6 hours per week and reduced the documentation error rate from 15% to under 0.3%.
In combination with self-scheduling, Dr. Baldwin also used Cortico’s RPA for healthcare to add pre-visit questionnaires and photo upload requirements to the booking process.
Now, patients are prompted to provide medical history, current concerns, and photographs of skin conditions before an appointment is confirmed. As with document triaging, this information automatically populates in the chart, both drastically reducing documentation time and improving medico-legal protection through baseline photographic evidence.
You can see a full overview of the outcomes achieved by Dr. Baldwin in the webinar below.
RPA Use Case 3 - Billing and Payment Automation
TRADITIONAL PAIN POINTS
Healthcare organizations struggle with fragmented payment collection across multiple touchpoints.
Staff must manually:
- Process payments at checkout
- Chase down balances via phone calls and paper statements
- Reconcile payments across different systems
- Enforce policies such as no-show fee collection.
The process is labor-intensive and inconsistent. Some patients pay immediately, others receive mailed statements weeks later, and many balances go uncollected entirely. Staff face the often uncomfortable task of collecting fees in person, while patients prefer digital payment options but rarely have access to them.
Meanwhile, no-show fees and missed appointment charges are difficult to enforce and require awkward conversations and manual follow-up that staff avoid.
WHY RPA WORKS
Payment workflows are an ideal use case of RPA in healthcare because they involve:
- Structured transaction data (amounts, payment methods, patient accounts)
- Clear business rules (when fees apply, how to process refunds)
- High volumes of tasks
Healthcare RPA can automate the entire payment lifecycle, without human intervention for routine transactions.
Automated payment collection integrated into the booking and visit workflow gives patients convenient payment options. The system calculates fees automatically (based on appointment type, no-show policies, or uninsured services), collects payment during booking or post-visit, and posts payments directly to billing systems without manual data entry.
REAL WORLD RESULTS
Cortico’s payment automation integrates directly into the booking workflow and syncs with Square for payment processing.
Either during booking or by using a healthcare RPA-powered post-visit request, patients can pay for:
- Appointments
- Forms
- Sick notes
- Reports
- Uninsured services
No-show fees are enforced automatically without staff intervention. Deposits are collected for appointments requiring them, and all transactions sync to the clinic’s accounting systems.
A majority of the 400 clinics across Canada, the US, and internationally utilizing Cortico implement RPA-powered billing and payment automation. This feature can be customized according to the needs and preferences of the organization.
For example, some clinics choose to only use pre-payments to enforce no-show policies and to charge for document requests. While others employ end-to-end billing and payments automation that virtually removes the need for staff intervention across this entire process.
RPA Use Case 4 - Enhanced Patient Engagement
TRADITIONAL PAIN POINTS
Healthcare organizations often struggle to effectively coordinate communication across multiple touchpoints, such as:
- Appointment confirmations
- Reminders
- Intake form delivery
- Test result notifications
- Payment requests
- General updates.
This fragmented approach can create gaps where patients may misunderstand important messages or receive instructions late (or not at all).
Negative outcomes related to communication challenges include patients not receiving intake forms until they arrive at the clinic, high non-attendance rates, and poor patient experience and engagement due to inconsistent instructions.
Meanwhile, staff spend hours on repetitive outreach tasks that could be automated and practices lack unified visibility into patient engagement.
WHY RPA WORKS
Patient engagement requires coordinating multiple systems that rarely integrate naturally (scheduling platforms, EMRs, payment processors, and messaging tools).
Healthcare RPA provides the integration backbone that enables these functions to work seamlessly, triggering the right message at the right time through the right channel, without manual intervention. This makes patient engagement one of the most valuable robotic process automation use cases in healthcare.
REAL WORLD RESULTS
With RPA in healthcare, providers can:
- Automatically send appointment confirmations immediately upon booking
- Deliver intake forms 48 hours before appointments (with automatic follow-up for incomplete forms)
- Notify patients of test results when ready
- Allow patients to manage their prescriptions
- Maintain ongoing engagement through secure messaging.
Organizations implementing automated patient engagement and messaging commonly report achieving significant no-show rate reductions, big decreases in staff time spent on routine communications, and greatly improved patient satisfaction.
We’ve measured Cortico’s patient engagement software platform across several RPA in healthcare case studies, and found that doctors can increase their capacity by up to 15% (or simply give them more time back at the end of the day).
The effects are so dramatic in part because providers can take care of simple admin tasks in just a click (sending a lab requisition to a patient) compared to assigning that task to a staff member, which often leads to downstream coordinating and needing to follow up later on.
Guaranteed Results from RPA with Cortico
Cortico’s range of healthcare RPA tools integrate directly with your EMR, replicating exactly how your staff would handle each task. Over 400 clinics across Canada, the USA, and internationally trust us to automate everything from patient scheduling, secure messaging, appointment reminders, intake software, payments, and more.
To get started with Cortico’s robotic process automation for healthcare, simply:
- Book a call with our customer success team.
- Discuss what aspects of your operation you want to automate.
- Start a trial and receive ongoing support to ensure your solution is effective.
After seeing our RPA solutions work with hundreds of providers across different specialties, we’ve implemented an ROI guarantee. In short, if you don’t see a reasonable ROI (as discussed in setup and onboarding), your monthly fees will be waived until we deliver.
Book a demo of Cortico today to see how your practice can benefit from RPA.
Where Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare Struggles
Not every healthcare workflow is suitable for robotic process automation. Poor candidates for RPA in healthcare share these common characteristics:
- Require complex clinical judgment - Tasks such as treatment planning, differential diagnosis, and care coordination involving complex patient circumstances.
- Handle primarily unstructured data - Clinical notes, discharge summaries, and handwritten prescriptions can be difficult for RPA. However, as we’ve explained throughout this article, an RPA + AI combination solves most of these challenges.
- Involve frequent exceptions - If over 20% of cases within a workflow require human review, it’s unlikely that RPA will significantly improve efficiency (because a high proportion of workload would still be diverted for manual action).
- Operate in rapidly changing systems - Platforms with regular updates can “break” RPA bots. At Cortico, we recognize that EMRs will always be updated regularly, so we proactively update our platform concurrently to avoid downtime.
The practical takeaway is to start with high-volume, rule-based administrative workflows where robotic process automation in healthcare delivers clear ROI (scheduling, intake, claims processing). With these automations running smoothly, you can then expand into more complex use cases if desired.
Robotic Process Automation in Healthcare: Summing Up
The true power of robotic process automation for healthcare lies in the simple, elegant solutions this technology provides for the most burdensome aspects of running a healthcare practice.
Front of office staff overwhelmed with scheduling? A healthcare RPA bot can be deployed to replicate the exact process a human staff member undertakes (minus the phone call, which we find is better replaced with patient self-scheduling).
Having trouble enforcing your no-show policy? Utilize RPA to tell patients exactly what they need to know about rebooking after a missed appointment, with zero awkwardness or ambiguity.
Struggling to manage incoming documents when triaging referrals? RPA will triage information exactly how your administrative staff and clinicians like it—instantly and with no errors.
Some of these changes might sound small in isolation. But when combined across a clinic’s entire operations, they produce an efficient and patient-focused experience that improves outcomes for all stakeholders within the healthcare system.
Furthermore, because robotic process automation in healthcare is 100% predictable, there’s no angst and uncertainty about “handing over the reins” to a software program. Simply decide what you want to automate, set the parameters, and RPA looks after the rest.
To discover how RPA in healthcare can help you tame administrative overwhelm, book a demo with Cortico today.
