Healthcare provider harnesses potential of agentic automation

Queensland’s Gold Coast Health has used UiPath, an agentic automation solution, to reduce processing times for critical areas, including patient referrals. The solution also addresses system reforms and workforce shortages and serves to improve patient care and wellbeing by creating a communication bridge between GPs and hospitals.

“Our partnership with UiPath has been instrumental in driving our digital transformation journey,” said Kirsten Hinze, Senior Director, Digital Experience at Gold Coast Health. “By automating time-consuming administrative tasks, we can redirect valuable resources towards enhancing the quality of patient care.”

Having recognised the need to optimise both clinical and administrative workflows — to serve a rapidly growing population and meet increasing demands for person-centred health care — Gold Coast Health’s digital transformation strategy has focused on enhancing efficiency, improving authorised access to critical information, and enabling healthcare professionals to dedicate more time to patients.

Since September 2022, it has successfully automated more than 19 processes. These range from simple 10-step operations to complex 300-step workflows across multiple systems, resulting in more than 40,000 hours of administrative time being redirected to patient care annually, which has also improved the employee experience for healthcare workers.

Gold Coast University Hospital.

“Gold Coast Health is at the forefront of emerging agentic automation technology that unifies AI agents, robots and people on a single system to enable dynamic workflows and real-time decision-making across complex processes,” said Peter Graves, Area Vice President ANZ for UiPath. “The result is improved staff experiences and enhanced patient care.”

A notable success has been in Gold Coast Health’s clinical photography management. “The automation has reduced image accessibility time from 19 hours to just 2–30 minutes, a 99.8% improvement,” Hinze said. “This real-time access to clinical images has significantly enhanced patient care, particularly after hours and on weekends.”

Another critical area in which Gold Coast Health has seen significant improvement through automation is the referrals process, which handles more than 130,000 patient referrals each year. By automating the entry of referral information across multiple systems, Gold Coast Health aims to reduce appointment wait times by 1–2 days and improve call centre efficiency.

The value of an automated referrals system revealed itself when, due to Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, Gold Coast Health staff were unable to access their offices. “During staffing issues caused by the cyclone, to come in and see the referral queue so low was a true blessing,” said Jo Kanakis, Gold Coast Health Nursing Director, Adult Outpatient Department. “In spite of the wind, flood and rain, the automation continued along its way getting referrals sorted.”

Top image credit: iStock.com/Jacob Wackerhausen