Care partners Midden-Holland enthusiastically getting started with RPA

Process optimization is high on the agenda in healthcare, due in part to a tight labor market and high administrative burden. In its efforts to optimize those processes, Zorgpartners Midden-Holland has chosen Robotic Process Automation (RPA), among other things, to help both employees and the organization move forward.

Zorgpartners is a so-called VVT organization (Nursing, Care and Home Care) in the Central Holland region. This care is largely provided intramurally. Part of the organization consists of home care, rehabilitation and assisted living facilities. The organization has a budget of approximately 170 million euros to provide quality care to approximately 3,000 intramural and extramural clients.

“In financial administration, we are constantly looking at how we can automate processes,” says Arnold Oudijk, Business Controller at Zorgpartners Midden-Holland. He spearheaded an RPA project at this Gouda-based healthcare organization in which other departments have since joined.

Innovation in tight labor market

He explains: “Innovation is moving fast in recent years. Especially since corona, more and more is possible online and digitally, and is being actively used. We keep a close eye on that, especially since we are facing a tight labor market in healthcare. Where you used to get several dozen letters in response to a vacancy, you now only get two or three. In addition, in the finance department, relatively many employees are retiring.”

So it is mainly about continuity and efficiency in operations and administration. “But more broadly within Zorgpartners it would be ideal to reduce the registration burden in healthcare, for example. Fewer people means that any contribution to efficiency is welcome.”

In that search, he came across Robotic Process Automation (RPA) two years ago. “We saw back then that automating repetitive tasks could be a useful innovation. In practice, that then took a while to sink in.”

Process optimization after workshop

But the desire to better design simple, repetitive work in particular for employees remained in the background. That was revived when Tacstone came up with concrete ideas in a conversation with Care Partners about innovation.

“The concrete examples Tacstone came up with during a demonstration from another healthcare facility showed that this can really help us.”

Peter Noordam | Concern controller Zorgpartners Midden-Holland

After the demo, Zorgpartners, together with Tacstone, organized a workshop for representatives of different departments. Denise van der Ploeg, Client Service Center Coordinator, says, “Sixteen processes were named there by the client administration, waiting list mediation and financial administration departments to be considered for RPA. From those, we eventually chose four processes to start with.”

This initially involves Registration Control for Client Administration; AGB Control for Planning & Control; Control when creating creditor payments for Financial Administration and reading in sales invoice lines for Financial Administration. The underlying systems that the robot works with are systems that many healthcare institutions deal with, such as Exact, Excel, ECD, Vecozo and Vektis.

Demo: Registration control

At Zorgpartners Midden Holland, the robot “Procespartner” is deployed for Robotic Process Automation (RPA). This robot supports various departments with administrative tasks such as reading invoice lines, checking accounts payable payments and performing AGB verifications. The demo video shows how Procespartner checks client registrations in the ECD.

Time savings and quality improvements

The AGB process, for example, eliminates the need to manually look up and enter those codes online. This check can now be done in advance, rather than after the fact. In financial administration, the robot checks twice a week about all 800 to 1,000 payment lines prepared from the financial package. Previously, this could only be done with spot checks.

Oudijk: “This not only saves us time, but also improves quality. It was necessary to adjust the work process, however, because not all invoices came in PDF. Now, recognition by the invoice scan takes place automatically during booking, and the payment process is started.”

“This not only saves us time, but also improves quality.”

Arnold Oudijk | Business Controller Zorgpartners Midden-Holland

Employee engagement

As is often the case with the introduction of robots, the initial reaction is often hesitant. Oudijk: “People still wonder whether the robot will take over their work. Creating awareness among employees is the basis for successful implementation of the project. That is why a process expert and owner were appointed for each process. Then, with this official, the process was worked out in collaboration with Tacstone. Their input forms the basis for the robot. It is important for adoption that people themselves are involved.”

Van der Ploeg: “It is very good that Arnold first explained the benefits of RPA to the employees involved with Tacstone.”

“That way it’s not only alive for the managers, but employees also see the added value. It’s important to include everyone.”

Denise van der Ploeg | Customer service center coordinator Zorgpartners Midden-Holland

Cost Savings

Noordam: “An important aspect for us is the balance between costs and benefits. We obviously want to know what the project actually delivers. We calculated the time savings for all sixteen selected processes. The robot can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without breaks or sleep. But the robot is not free of charge, so we want to see clearly what it effectively yields. And in addition to those cost savings, quality plays a role.”

“Especially in healthcare, this can be a significant improvement if, for example, employees don’t have to duplicate certain registrations. Once these processes are running and we see the added value, we will definitely move to a second phase, where we will pull it wider and automate other processes as well.”