Recent Client Success Story
KLST has completed many successful SharePoint 2013 and more recently SharePoint 2016 Customization projects, helping organizations realize the full potential of SharePoint via extending SharePoint Features to meet business goals and objectives. Find below a recent case study where KLST was engaged in building complex customization on the Microsoft SharePoint 2013 platform (we have changed the name and industry of the client case study to protect its privacy)
Case Study – Leading Healthcare Organization Reduces Manual Effort by 5000 Hours per Month.
Key Client Challenge
- Processing each Patient On-Boarding report was time- and labor-intensive, involving five to six handoffs and a greater number of standalone systems. Incoming Patient On-Boarding reports were saved in a paper folder and then used to drive the rest of the process, which involved: manual data validation and screening for immediate medical issues using one system; review by a specialist using another system; twice-daily deliveries of folders to local oncologist; retrieval of oncologists’ handwritten notes; transcription of the notes into another system; and independent review for transcription errors using yet another system.
- Processing each Patient Report required at least 2-3 hours of labor, with average turnaround times of 3 days before the results were ready for a study’s sponsor. Supporting the process also placed a heavy burden on the organization’s IT team, which spent over 200 hours per week supporting all the different systems and creating customized databases for each new cancer type.
- From a clinical perspective, it limited the organization’s ability to meet the quality levels and turnaround times demanded by patients. IT resources couldn’t focus on other, more strategic initiatives. All of these issues restricted profitability and overall organizational growth.
Our Solution
- KLST built a single, integrated solution for Patient acquisition and on-boarding on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 running on the Windows Server 2016 operating system as the foundation for its new solution and Nintex Forms and Nintex Workflows for business process management on SharePoint Server.
- Custom data-driven workflows were developed to dramatically reduce the time, effort, and potential for error in processing and analyzing Patient Reports. It also automated communication with clinical trial sites, oncologists, and study sponsors, to further increase efficiencies and reduce turnaround times.
- A Customization Plan ensured that any “bad code” and poorly thought out changes are phased out in an agreement between IT and business stakeholders, especially those that could be risky to uptime and ongoing operational management of the SharePoint Intranet. Any new code was forced to undergo a structured quality assurance process.
- Patient reports that pass automated, upfront error checks will be made available to oncologists via the web within minutes for review by oncologists and the results are automatically routed to the sponsors a few minutes later. The manual effort was limited to handling exceptions, which left clinical trial teams with more time to address the upstream causes of those errors. As Nintex forms are highly configurable with no development effort, business power users could modify the form as per new study requirements.
Key Benefits
- Increased Return on Investment: The minute-processing of Patient Reports with no data errors resulted in a sharp reduction in processing times, roughly equal to a monthly saving of 5000 Hours equivalent to over $200,000 savings in monthly labor costs. IT Labor Savings were also observed close to 1000 hours equivalent to $60,000 savings in monthly IT labor costs, which led to a marked increase in productivity and ROI.
- Reduced Turnaround Times: The new system allowed quicker turnaround times as Patient onboarding reports could be reviewed within 30 minutes, including improved data quality, better measure oncologist variability, and improved on other key measures of customer satisfaction.
- Reduced Costs: Storage and paper costs associated with the maintenance of physical folders were eliminated, resulting in an annual savings of at least another $100,000 per year.
- Rapid, cost-effective development: Rapid cost-effective development of business forms using Nintex Forms out-of-box features and Nintex Workflows ensured that the 1st phase of the project could be finished in just 4 weeks from the project start date.
