National For-Profit Hospital Network CRM Business Analyst

The Client

Our client is a national, for-profit network of five hospitals that serves and treats cancer patients throughout the United States. Our client follows an integrative approach to cancer care that uses conventional methods like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, while also offering integrative therapies to help manage side effects like pain, nausea, and fatigue.

The Opportunity

Our client treats patients in 5 hospitals across the United States, processes insurance verifications in a central office in Zion, IL, conducts their main New Patient Call Center in Schaumburg, IL, and maintains their core IT staff in Goodyear, AZ.

Because of the wide employee distribution and complexity of patient data needing to move and flow between staff members, our client had a need to implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to keep their patient information organized, secure, and accessible to those who needed it. In 2014, our client chose to implement Microsoft CRM 2011 to assist with their new patient intake, tracking, and record keeping process.

During the requirements process for the CRM Implementation, our client management and the CRM design team neglected to consider all of the scenarios of the patient intake process and much of the patient flow through the new system was left incomplete. It was determined only about 60% of the ways a new prospect could become a patient and get treated at one of their hospitals was accounted for and many patient issues were left that the system did not know how to handle.

The Solution

In order to address these gaps and patient needs, our client needed a qualified CRM Business Analyst who could troubleshoot issues on-site at the Schaumburg, IL new patient call center and report issues back to the main IT support group in Arizona. Logan Consulting and CTCA met and discussed providing a Business Analyst resource. This person would provide support, document requirements for system fixes, and ease the concerns of management as well as the frustrations of staff due to a non-fully functional patient tracking CRM system. Logan Consulting was then able to provide a resource with Microsoft CRM knowledge to help with new system issues, but also the business analyst acumen needed to assess technical issues and act as a liaison between the business and technology departments.

The Results

  • Identification and documentation of gaps and system limitations which provided CTCA development team the necessary information to fix critical issues.
  • Creation of system ‘workarounds’ which allowed employees to use alternative ways of submitting patient information and moving patients through CRM without the need for costly development.
  • Provided an additional resource to create, lead, and facilitate meetings between the business and information technology teams, especially when key members were unavailable or out of office. This allowed the software development life cycle to move forward without disruption and the IT Sprint schedule to meets its promised dates.
  • Higher employee productivity by troubleshooting issues on-site, avoiding lags and downtimes of staff waiting on system fixes.
  • Coaching and training conducted with new and existing users on CRM 2011 and all implemented fixes and workarounds. This in turn freed up management resources who were previously tasked with training.
  • Enhanced communication throughout the organization by having a central resource in which the call center, insurance verifications, and hospital staff could relay information through.
  • Proactive and on-the-spot fixes and troubleshooting of system bugs through use of extensive Microsoft CRM knowledge and system administrator access.
  • Improved employee morale due to the individual, in-person support and quick, efficient response and action taken to resolve issues.