Success Stories
Automating Work Processes at Treant Physiotherapy
- By Nidaros
Background
Treant, a large healthcare organization in the Drenthe and southeastern Groningen regions, asked Nidaros to automate its processes in such a way that repetitive tasks could be easily performed by virtual robots.
The Physiotherapy department was one of the areas where Treant identified an opportunity to apply RPA. For the secretariat, the daily manual processing of new patients was a recurring and somewhat time-consuming task.
Every morning, the secretariat reviewed the list of new patients and transferred it to ParaNICE, an application used by paramedical disciplines within hospitals to schedule appointments.
At the same time, the physiotherapists had to “take in” all new patients in the Nexus Electronic Patient Record (EPR) every day and then load that information into ParaNICE. In this system, each employee and department has their own calendar. Staff members had to manually move appointments from the departmental calendar to their personal calendars.
Solution and Result
To optimize the process, Nidaros began with a thorough observation at the Physiotherapy department of Treant. Sitting alongside the staff, detailed questions were asked about every action in the workflow: What do you do each day? Why do you do that? Where does the input come from? This precise approach gave Nidaros a complete understanding of the work processes.
With this knowledge, Nidaros created a comprehensive process map and work instruction — a kind of blueprint of all human actions. A robot was then programmed to perform exactly the same steps that employees previously carried out manually: checking for new patients, “taking them into consultation” in Nexus, and processing the data in ParaNICE.
The process has now been successfully implemented and the robot is running stably. The solution operates seven times a day at fixed intervals, ensuring a constant flow of processing. This has resulted in a significant reduction of administrative workload, allowing staff to enjoy their work more and freeing up time for what truly matters: attention to patients and colleagues — leading to happier clients and an improved workplace atmosphere.
