Discovery of Hospital Billing Process in a Regional Hospital Using Process Mining

Delays and complexities in the billing process for healthcare services can inconvenience patients and hinder the efficient functioning of regional hospitals. This study aims to utilize process mining techniques to analyze event logs and identify bottleneck activities within the billing process. By evaluating the process, the research aims to understand the causality behind these bottlenecks and propose effective solutions for enhancing efficiency and reducing time costs. The research employs the PM4Py open-source toolkit, including PM4Py-GPU for computationally intensive tasks. Through fitness alignments between event logs and process models, it is found that approximately 47.128 percent of traces match the process model, exhibiting a good level of conformity with an average fitness of 0.8888. Notably, the study reveals that over 3 percent of billing processes in regional hospitals exhibit repetitive occurrences of specific activities consecutively. The identification of this repetitive activity pattern prompts a deeper investigation into its root causes and implications for resource utilization and performance. By addressing these causative factors, the research aims to propose optimized approaches to streamline the billing process, thus enhancing overall efficiency and customer satisfaction levels for the hospitals. Overall, the findings of this study contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the billing process in healthcare services and provide valuable insights for hospitals to implement targeted improvements, reduce delays, and offer high-quality services to their patients.