Quanton Delivers Intelligent Automation To Free Up OmniHealth GPsto Spend More Time With Patients

OH-Bot has solved a pain point for OmniHealth GPs,

while also providing key benefits for patients.

Summary

· OmniHealth delivers medical services nationwide through a network of general practices. It has over 20 GP practices across New Zealand and keeps a close eye on ways to help GPs and nurses to be more productive and give better outcomes for patients.

· In November 2019, OmniHealth took on the contract to handle the aged care practice for Selwyn Foundation, a provider of residential and respite care for the elderly.

· In a fast turnaround project working with Quanton, OmniHealth is using the UiPath Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform to run the automated process of transferring GP notes to Leecare, an Aged Residential Care System.

· Since going live on February 21st, 278 cases were processed using automation in the first 26 days with a 78% success rate. These results are in line with initial estimates and will return over 194 hours annually back to clinical staff, the equivalent of nearly five working weeks of a full-time staff member.

· That increase in efficiency is not only bringing down wait times for patients but ensuring OmniHealth doesn’t have to immediately bring in additional doctors or support staff to cope with activity that adds no direct value to patient care.

As New Zealand has readied itself now for post-Covid health care, one healthcare provider is harnessing intelligent automation to ensure its doctors get more time dealing with patients, rather than admin.

OmniHealth has taken the first steps into intelligent automation with a virtual assistant who is handling the mundane, time consuming task of transferring patient data from one system to another – minimising administration time for each patient and freeing GPs up to spend more time with patients. Based on data collected before automation, the solution is expected to free up over 194 hours for clinical staff; the equivalent of nearly five working weeks of a full-time staff member.

OH-Bot, which was developed by New Zealand digital transformation services and business automation specialists Quanton using the UiPath platform, has helped bring down patient waiting times and reduced the need for OmniHealth to add additional doctors – a scarce resource in New Zealand.

The solution, which took just five weeks to develop using agile methodologies, transfers GP notes, entered into the GP patient management system, into Leecare, an Aged Residential Care system, which is accessible by nurses at Selwyn Retirement Village.

OmniHealth won a contract to provide medical services to three of Selwyn Foundation’s residential care villages, encompassing five residential facilities

Mark Wills, OmniHealth Chief Executive Officer, says the OH-Bot system has solved a pain point for OmniHealth GPs, while also providing key benefits for patients.

“OmniHealth has a goal to ensure a long-term sustainable future for general practice. How we are going to do that is to ensure we have practices working in the most efficient and effective way for the patients they serve. This involves making sure there is the right mix of clinical and admin skills, really good processes, and that we are working efficiently and focused on serving the patient population we are responsible very well. That ensures we’re working economically so we’re also financially sustainable as well as being sustainable from the point of the workforce and workload.”

Wills says OH-Bot is a way to ensure best use of GP resources.

“We have an obligation to ensure patient notes are transferred into Leecare, an Aged Residential Care System, however we don’t believe using doctors is the most efficient way of doing that. Their time is very precious and asking them to do admin takes them away from patients.”

The organisation, which delivers medical services via over 20 medical centres across 16 towns in New Zealand, had contemplated other options, including using admin to manually enter the information, before hitting on the Robotic Process Automation solution with Quanton.

Delivered in just five weeks, OH-Bot is bringing multiple benefits, from the reduction in time spent entering data and the corresponding increase in time available for doctors to see patients, through to an improvement in data quality through the flagging of exceptions. Each time OH-bot, which works from 6am to 6pm every day without taking any holiday breaks or sick leave, completes a run a report is emailed to the business outlining completed transactions and any exceptions where notes couldn’t be transferred for reasons such as a data mismatch.

Garry Green, Quanton’s Managing Director, says: “Most organisations do have problems with their data and the quality of it, because it is not verified after being entered.

“In the solution we designed, data can be corrected each time so over time data quality improves.”

Meanwhile nurses at Selwyn Village where Senior Care Practice patients reside, are able to access notes on their patients in a timelier manner.

“It’s timelier and more accurate,” says Andrea Lawson, OmniHealth Practice Manager Central/South Operations.

OH-Bot is also ensuring strict data security standards in a time when data privacy is front of mind and a key consideration for all in the healthcare sector. The little intelligent assistant’s lips are firmly sealed and with the process running behind the scenes data being transferred is never seen – unlike when admin assistants or nurses transfer, and it can be seen briefly on screen.

OH-Bot wipes all data from its system once the data has been transferred.

Quanton has been working with DHBs and private sector providers in the health care market for four years, assisting them to alleviate some of the big challenges faced by the sector, including a forecast high rate or retirement among GPs. Some 50 percent of GPs are expected to retire in the next 10 years.

Green says the system can be harnessed by other practices.

“A lot of practices have the issue that they have a core system which handles some things, but then they have other systems on the periphery such as bookings or campaigns systems, or systems of providers they’re contracted to which they have to enter data into too,” Green says.

Adds John Che, Quanton Project Manager: “The system we have developed can be applied as a lift and shift to other core systems used by other doctors.”

For OmniHealth too, the intelligent automation journey is just beginning, with the company looking to automate other processes to reap even more benefits for its GPs, nurses, and patients.

About OmniHealth https://omnihealth.co.nz/

OmniHealth has the goal to become New Zealand’s leading health care provide and ensure there are strong, effective, and sustainable general practice systems for the future. The OmniHealth network has over 70,000 enrolled patients, over 20 medical centres, 300 plus employees and has centers over 16 towns through the country.

About Quanton https://www.quanton.co.nz/

Established in 2016, Quanton is New Zealand’s leading consultancy and implementation partner for Intelligent Automation. Its range of digital services transform New Zealand operating models to a new, future-focused way of working to build internal capability and find the sweet sports where automation can have the biggest impact on the business – with quantifiable benefit. Quanton has invested heavily to create New Zealand’s largest locally based team of professionally accredited business automation specialists across sectors and working with New Zealand’s most recognisable brands in health, financial services, banking, finance, construction, insurance, transport and logistics and telecommunications.

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