Ancillary services are a crucial part of the medical system, providing additional support for healthcare and laboratory organizations. They are crucial in the medical ecosystem because they provide personal critical care to patients who have undergone or are about to go through treatment.
Ancillary services can typically cover a wide range of types, including hospice, EMS services, diagnostics, genetics, lab work, pharmacy, dialysis, radiology, and many more. These are generally categorized into diagnostic, therapeutic, and custodial services.
While many healthcare systems have in-house ancillary services, there are also many unaffiliated organizations that perform these services. They can also help reduce the workload in larger organizations by making sure that patient care and urgent services are provided promptly without putting extra strain on in-house staff or resources.
Much like many other systems, ancillary services could also benefit from increased automation in their day-to-day operations. If you haven’t considered adding automation and greater data centralization to your operations before, here are three main reasons why you should consider doing so in 2025.
Increased Operational Efficiency
Automation is a force multiplier that lowers the stress of your employees at every level but can be particularly valuable to decision-makers. Being able to automate staff scheduling or shift assignments without having to devote many hours per week can be incredibly valuable for administrators. Organizations can also look to digitize other parts of the patient experience, including billing, streamlining the intake process, and assisting in the secure transfer of patient information. All these improvements provide immediate, tangible benefits for your patients.
Automation can also reduce the amount of human error in diagnostics or medication dispensing, and organizations can expect to see reductions in staff burnout, which means your staff will have less administrative stress and be more efficient in their roles.
Cost Savings
Increased operational efficiency can also result in significant cost savings. Besides the money saved by not having to correct mistakes generated by human error, having a system for managing patient billing, tracking staffing hours to streamline labor costs, and using workforce management tools to predict needed staffing levels all contribute to improving the bottom line. Something as simple as being able to visualize your organization’s daily, weekly, and monthly costs from a single dashboard can be the key to success.
Patient Wellness & Patient Outcome Improvement
One outcome we see often is that when automation or ancillary technology is implemented, organizations will often see a drop in overbooking or no-shows for appointments, which benefits both patients and staff. This saves your staff time since they don’t have to scramble to reschedule overbooked patients, and it saves your patients time but not making wasted trips.
Patient satisfaction is improved with reduced potential waiting times, ensuring that staffing levels are monitored and adjusted as needed.
Technology can also help improve patient data security by encrypting critical data and restricting access.
Accuracy in patient paperwork and care is non-negotiable. And, like any piece of technology, automation is a tool and not a replacement. The best organizations succeed in part because they can leverage technology alongside the strengths of their staff to create one unified solution.
If you’d like to learn more about how StaffReady can help accelerate your operations and help you address these issues using our clinical workforce management tools, you can book a meeting with one of our experts here and accelerate your organization’s progress.
