Work redesign to deliver business, employee, and customer benefits.

Pressure on margins

A major UK home healthcare business needed to respond to pressure on profit margin.

The challenge was caused by reduced competitor pricing and a rise in standards demanded by the Care Quality Commission.

Senior management was planning a major new systems implementation, but were keen not to ‘systemise’ existing process errors.

OEE Consulting was set the challenge to rapidly identify and re-engineer key processes. Through maximising service effectiveness and process efficiency, we could ensure the new system helped to solve business challenges, rather than compounding them.

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Maximising the opportunity

A two-stage diagnostic and design approach was adopted to target work in the most significant areas.

Stage 1 was a 5-week business process review of all service delivery operations from customer demand to invoice payment.

Stage 2 moved to a more in-depth diagnostic. We identified numerous issues which were amplifying one another – affecting customers, nurses, and the bottom line.

Nurse visits were not being scheduled properly. Poor planning meant gaps in their schedules, low utilisation and the use of expensive agency staff. Due to structural and communication issues, this wasn’t visible to senior management.

Massive inconsistencies in the submission of timesheets and expenses meant huge volumes of re-work and already unhappy nurses were being paid late.

This was creating a division between central functions and the front line teams – all of which was leading to high nurse attrition, and a negative customer experience with inconsistent appointment timings and multiple points of contact.

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Results through collaboration

Once these issues had been identified, we involved the front line teams in redesigning more effective, patient centred care services, seeing immediate results: