Cases

Franciscus transforms patient care with TriniCo

Franciscus is a leading hospital in the Rotterdam Rijnmond region and is known for its high-quality care and patient-oriented approach. With locations in Rotterdam, Schiedam, Maassluis and Berkel en Rodenrijs, the hospital serves a diverse group of people and offers a wide range of medical care. With over 4,600 employees, more than 350 medical specialists and 120 volunteers, they are available to their patients day and night. The professionals at Franciscus work together to provide care to more than 140,000 outpatients and approximately 30,000 clinical admissions annually.

Franciscus transforms patient care with TriniCo

Sector

Healthcare

Location

Rotterdam (NL)

Organization size

>5,000 employees

Messages

5,500 per month

Challenge

To improve the efficiency and quality of their customer contact, the hospital started using TriniCo customer contact software in 2019.

Franciscus has a team of 60 employees at the Franciscus Contact Center and two registration desks, who speak to patients by phone and help them every day. They work with TriniCo every day for, among other things, registering and consulting patient contact (moments), consulting information from the knowledge base and sending and forwarding messages to the outpatient clinics.

The outpatient clinics use TriniCo to read and follow up on the notes that are sent, which is done by several hundred employees. On an annual basis, the hospital processes approximately 350,000 telephone calls and sends 5,500 messages to the outpatient clinics every month, which amounts to 66,000 messages per year.

TriniCo offers functionalities that an EHR does not have, such as registering contact moments with patients, forwarding messages and automatically saving information in the knowledge base.

More structure and efficiency through automation

Compared to the past, communication is now more structured through the use of TriniCo . It takes less time to send a message, because everything is automatic. This is a big difference. The outpatient clinics are very satisfied with the automatic messages they now receive. This works more efficiently than the written e-mail messages of the past.

Before TriniCo, if a patient called the hospital and the contact center employee could not answer the question, the employee would send an email with the callback request and the patient data to the outpatient clinic. The patient data was manually transferred from the patient file to an email. The contact center employee does not answer medical questions; these must be forwarded to the outpatient clinic.

In TriniCo a note is now opened, automatically filled with the necessary information and forwarded to the relevant outpatient clinic. This makes the process much more efficient.

Knowledge management

The integration of TriniCo into Franciscus began in 2019 at the ear, nose and throat (ENT) outpatient clinic. Joost Groenestein, manager of the Franciscus Contact Center, soon saw more possibilities and opportunities with TriniCo within the hospital.

Joost emphasized the importance of knowledge management within the hospital and made sure that the Franciscus Contact Center was equipped with an extensive knowledge base. In this knowledge base, employees can find all the information that supports them in answering phone calls and emails from patients.

To make it easier for employees to access knowledge, a question-answer screen was built as part of the knowledge base. This contains the most common answers to customer questions and internal information or instructions. Important information and recent news, which are frequently asked about, can be placed on the homepage via a setting. This gives employees quick access to the latest information and allows them to answer non-medical questions within a short time.

Ongoing trajectory

Recently, a process was started to standardize all information and processes regarding making appointments with outpatient clinics within the hospital and to include them in the knowledge base. This enables employees of the contact center to make appointments for all outpatient clinics, so that patients can be helped immediately. A big step for the hospital, since in the past patients had to be manually transferred to an outpatient clinic to make an appointment.

'The goal is to standardize the working methods of the various outpatient clinics, with all their exceptions, as much as possible and record them in a knowledge base. This allows employees of the contact center to schedule appointments directly for all outpatient clinics.' Joost Groenestein.

Currently, almost 10 outpatient clinics are connected to TriniCo. The aim is to connect another 20 outpatient clinics to the customer contact system in the short term, in order to ultimately centralise the telephony and messaging of all outpatient clinics in the Franciscus Contact Centre.

The aim is to standardise the working methods of the outpatient clinics and record them in the knowledge base, so that the Contact Centre can schedule appointments directly.

Link between HiX and TriniCo

HiX (Chipsoft) is the electronic patient file (EPD) in which patient data is stored. The system is linked to TriniCo, which allows patient data and appointments from HiX to be retrieved. real-time available in TriniCo. The information is always up-to-date and all employees of the Franciscus Contact Center have the most recent information.

While HiX is responsible for the registration, storage and display of patient data, TriniCo focuses on maintaining and recording patient contact and storing all knowledge in the knowledge base. The connection has led to higher efficiency in the contact center.

Necessary for healthcare institution

When asked whether Joost would recommend TriniCo to other hospitals or healthcare institutions, he responded enthusiastically: 'Certainly, I can absolutely recommend TriniCo to other hospitals or healthcare institutions. The process that we are going through with TriniCo together with the specialists from Harbers is really great. A system like TriniCo is indispensable for a hospital. TriniCo offers the functionality that an electronic patient file (EPD) like HiX does not have, such as registering contact moments with patients, forwarding messages and automatically saving information in the knowledge base. An EPD is mainly focused on the patient himself, while TriniCo focuses on maintaining contact with the patient. That is why TriniCo is an excellent addition and absolutely necessary.'

Measuring is knowing

As one of the biggest advantages of using TriniCo, Joost mentions that the hospital can now measure much more. “For us it is essential to have insight into what is happening within this hospital and to be able to manage things properly. We mainly monitor repeat traffic, the number of messages sent from TriniCo to the outpatient clinics and the processing times. We also keep track of how many messages the outpatient clinics receive from primary care. With this data we can manage and measure in a targeted manner,” says Joost Groenestein.

Work planning

Another advantage of using TriniCo is that it provides insight into how long contact moments with patients last. Franciscus uses the Verint Workforce Management (WMF) software for the planning and scheduling of employees of the contact center. By automatically loading the information about the number of contacts via the various communication channels and the duration of these contacts from TriniCo into WFM, it is possible to determine the peak moments for the contact center based on these moments and to make a forecast and schedule for the number of employees that are needed at different times of the day. This improves efficiency and prevents increasing queues for patients.

For us it is essential to have insight into what is happening within this hospital and to be able to manage things properly.

Results

Thanks to the implementation of TriniCo and the extensive knowledge base, the employees of the Franciscus Contact Center are now able to work more efficiently and effectively. The number of outpatient clinics using the software has grown from one to ten, and further expansion is being worked on.

In addition, we make extensive use of the knowledge base so that employees can quickly acquire knowledge and see what is needed, and it is managed in a targeted manner based on measurable values and results.

Future plans of Franciscus

Franciscus continues to work on further optimizing its patient contact processes. One of the goals is to centralize all telephone traffic for all outpatient clinics and to further expand the knowledge base. These steps will contribute to even better service and higher patient satisfaction.

In addition to linking e-mail and the contact form on the hospital website with TriniCo, the hospital aims to have certain administrative actions performed automatically via TriniCo.

With these future plans, Franciscus hopes to further improve their services and increase efficiency in the Franciscus Contact Center.