Case Study

A 360-Degree, Bespoke IT Solution Sets the Stage for Speedier Patient Care

Download the PDF to save this content for later:

Challenge

In the ideal surgical practice, patients move quickly from referral to assessment to specialized care. But at one leading medical and health insurance group in the U.S., manual workflows riddled with inefficiencies elongated the time patients had to wait to get access to the care they needed.

This was particularly true for one of the group’s high-volume centers in a major metropolitan region, where bariatric surgery patients were waiting a year or more for a referral-to-surgery workflow that typically takes five to six months. Providers within the bariatric service line face a disproportionate number of process complications, including higher-than-average accreditation standards and patient testing requirements. Navigating patients through those complexities — while maintaining high-quality care — posed an additional challenge for providers.

The burden was especially heavy on the center’s nurses, who fielded around 150 referrals per month through manual tracking systems. Nurses would conduct hourlong calls with patients every six to eight weeks, putting significant strain on the center’s resources.

Long wait times and onerous workflows led to an uptick in patient complaints and nurse dissatisfaction. To solve these challenges, the group’s leaders turned to Elxo to build an automated solution that would speed up patients’ pathways to surgery.

Solution

The group’s Medical Director for Bariatric Surgery knew they needed a bespoke solution tailored to their needs. Working directly with Elxo founder Andre Ahuja and the Elxo team, the medical director shared a vision for the product, along with the clinical knowledge to ensure it was relevant to patients and staff.

The result of this collaboration?

A 360-degree solution that’s set to streamline workflows for around 1,500 patients and 30 staff members — including operational leads, surgeons, and nurses — per year. The solution will automate mundane tasks in the patient workflow to reduce strain on nurses and ensure patients get to their surgeries faster.

The solution, which is currently in development, includes both patient-facing and provider-facing sides. Patients can use their application to take control of their own healthcare journeys and access the critical, easy-to-understand information they need to be part of the shared medical decision-making process. Providers can get a quick view of where patients are within the workflow and easily divert resources to help move them along.

During the yearlong process of building the product, Andre and the medical director were able to create a truly collaborative partnership that enabled this innovation. Andre and the Elxo team immersed themselves in the organization, listened to their unique needs, and always responded to ideas with a positive attitude.

Benefits

1,500+ patients and 30+ staff impacted

Reduction in typical call time with patients from 1 hour to a few minutes

Faster referral-to-surgery workflows (250% expected improvement)

Automated processes

Next Steps

The Elxo team is nearing the end of their development process and working to integrate the solution into the medical group’s electronic medical records system. Slated for an early 2024 release, the solution is already making big waves within the group. Business leaders from other service lines are examining the prototype and starting to make plans for applying it to their specialty areas.

But Andre and the medical director won’t stop at simply launching the product. They’ve outlined continuous improvement plans to measure the solution’s ongoing success.

In fact, the medical director has integrated the group’s research institute into the rollout process to prepare to systematically measure the speed at which patients are moving through the system, the size of case volumes, and satisfaction scores across patients and providers. And with Elxo’s low-code enablement, the group’s team will be able to make quick adjustments as needed — further positioning this solution as a model of successful innovation for the entire organization.