FysioHolland's growth spurt: "As you get bigger, small irritations in systems and processes also get bigger, and then you start automating"

FysioHolland's growth spurt: "As you get bigger, small irritations in systems and processes also get bigger, and then you start automating"

Finance director Geert Brouwer and project manager Alwin de Wit are at the helm of an automation drive at FysioHolland

Growth is always good for an organization, but you have to be able to keep up. FysioHolland has grown over the past few years to become the largest centralized player within the physical therapy industry. Through acquisitions and new locations, FysioHolland is gaining momentum, but this comes with challenges. "FysioHolland is the physio organization in the Netherlands. Being big has a number of disadvantages, and we hope not to have to deal with them," says Brouwer.

"Through a number of acquisitions we have grown in size. The advantage of acquisitions is that you grow quickly. The disadvantage is that you keep adding new processes, systems and organizations. Two years ago we decided to hold our position and standardize the IT landscape before we continued to grow. As you grow, you run the great risk of accepting new exceptions in the process. That's no problem at all for a few cases, but at forty or fifty it starts to get irritating. Every month you forget at least one exception, and that is not the intention. That's what we've been working on for the past few years."

With 130 locations spread throughout the Netherlands, FysioHolland faced problems that you only have as a nationally oriented party in the physical therapy industry. Smaller players in the market, for example, only need one database in the widely used Intramed. For FysioHolland, this was definitely not the case due to its size; they need as many as twenty. "If you're small, you might find it irritating. When you're big, you find it very irritating, and then you start automating," said the financial executive's line of thinking.

"A number of things we automate also because we think: if you have to do this by hand, it's just disruptive."

Why Fysio Holland started automating

Processes had to be more streamlined and organized than before. At first, this responsibility lay with the regional parties. Internally, it became clear that there was a demand for a uniform approach, one system to ensure that the administrative burden was reduced. Irritation about tedious, time-consuming processes played a role in this, but FysioHolland also thinks about its own colleagues: "On the one hand, we started automating in order to execute time-consuming matters faster and more efficiently. As a result, we can now shift our focus to other activities. However, we also automate a number of things because we think: if you have to do this by hand, it's just disruptive."

Administrative pressure in the healthcare sector

It is no secret that the administrative pressure in the healthcare sector is high. Although this is true to a lesser extent within physical therapy, project manager De Wit says that one saves a lot of time by having software robots perform administrative tasks. "Mr. Data," the name of the robot, "takes the data from our electronic patient record and transports it to the dashboard. Previously, we had to do this ourselves from over 20 administrations because this is not otherwise possible in Intramed, and the digital workplace (our ICT department) spent a lot of time doing this," he emphasizes. The estimated time saving is about eight hours a week. "In addition to minimizing the manual work, we also immediately updated the frequency from three times a week to every day."

Within healthcare, a lot of data is used. After all, healthcare institutions have to communicate with health insurers, who reimburse the costs incurred. To do this, they need to know a lot about the patient concerned. If information is missing, the organization receives the claim back and has to look into it again. This all takes time, and time is money. "For the claims process, it is a very important part to check whether someone is who they really say they are," says De Wit.

"On the weekends, the robot already gets a lot done."

Brewer takes over, "You have to imagine: to declare you have something like fifteen steps that you have to perform. Why is this so complicated, you ask? We declare to the health insurer, and if you don't have all the boxes ticked in green on their checklist, it's just sent back. We are working on a large robot that will check whether all these checkmarks are green," he continues. This is the robot that he says will make him the happiest because it will take a lot of work off his hands. Usually, the claims process is started on Monday, and they're not done with it until Wednesday. "The robot will do a lot of preliminary work over the weekend. As a result, we can hopefully start knocking on health insurance companies' doors as early as Monday or Tuesday morning."

The advantages of Yarado for Fysio Holland

Okay, the robots take over many manual tasks from the FysioHolland team, but is it also possible to make tangible what it exactly yields? Brewer attempts to quantify the benefits of RPA and the impact of Yarado. "The data exports will save something like eight hours a week," he estimates. "And then we have a number of robots that are used incidentally to clear a backlog. That saves a lot. Closing files had cost us about 0.6 FTEs - over a thousand hours - this year. We also decided to add a second robot, because things were not going fast enough for us. That's also the advantage of such a robot." You don't need a recruiter to put an extra robot on.

He also believes that the robot that checks BSN numbers before the forms go to health insurance companies also saves about eight hours. FysioHolland is working on a larger robot, which Brouwer suspects will generate ten free hours per week. For his staff, the benefits of the automation are also all too clear: "Of those two FTEs, you don't say goodbye to them, of course. We have many declarants who have been seniors for years, but do a lot of junior work because it is necessary in the process. By using the robot, you get rid of all the junior work and you only keep the senior work - the research work. So we're making a huge quality leap, and probably have less need to replace a person when someone leaves."

The appeal of Yarado

Yarado works with a monthly model and low implementation costs. These are two characteristics that Brouwer found very attractive when he stumbled upon us as a potential automation partner. Brouwer, who had worked with RPA before, actually knew right away that the model was an excellent fit for his organization: "If you don't write down exactly which processes you want automated, you'll get a bill from here to Tokyo, I've learned about RPA. So everyone has to be keen to make an exact process description and handle every file according to the manual," he knows from previous experience. At Yarado, he says, this was not an issue at all.

"For me, the pricing model was also kind of a deciding factor. With subscription models, you have the idea that once it's paid for, the service stops. That's what really surprised us at Yarado. Your team really did their best to set up that robot perfectly," he concludes. While several robots are already running, FysioHolland regularly sits down to determine the extent to which a new robot should be added. Indeed, at FysioHolland, the optimization effort does not stop when the fourth robot is running. What is one of the favorite agenda items of the robot-related meetings? What name to give the robot. Mr. Data, The Terminator and Swift JAapie (a robot that makes sure check marks are set to 'yes') are already running, who knows where FysioHolland will come up with more.