By: Herman van den Tempel, Commercial Director Healthcare Benelux & The Nordic Countries, Atos
As part of the Long-Term Care Act (Wet langdurige zorg), the Care Assessment Centre (CIZ, Centrum indicatiestelling zorg) receives almost 200,000 requests for intensive patient care each year. The CIZ has a responsibility that has many consequences for people who require this level of care. It is crucial therefore, that there is a reliable system in place to ensure accuracies. The CIZ uses Portero for this, a system that it has developed together with Atos. This system replaces one that dates from 1994, which was a combination of 78 individual systems and 17 different databases.
Overflowing filing cabinets
Cécile Andriessen, CIZ’s regional manager of Southeast Netherlands, was heavily involved in the digital transformation of her organization. When she began working with the Regional Indication Body (RIO) in Nijmegen in 1998, care assessment was still decentralised with 78 RIOs in the Netherlands. This meant that a different registration system was used by each office for the same purpose. Cécile can still remember the filing cabinets overflowing with paper files, and that was when they still worked with WordPerfect.
The transition to central needs assessment in 2005 marked the beginning of the digital transformation journey. The different RIOs were merged into the CIZ. During this merger, it was decided that one automated registration system would be used: Gino. This system was based chiefly on management output. In the beginning, Cécile remarks, “It worked just fine. But if legislation changed or the budget turned out to be slightly different than expected on the day of the King’s speech, the entire system had to be revamped.”
For needs assessment, the CIZ must be able to rely on faultless registration and the correct application of legislation. So, in addition to Gino, the team decided to develop a unique registration system: Portero. This system focuses on processes and users. In combination with Atos’ professionals, IT teams and information managers of the CIZ, the system has been tailored entirely to the workflow of the CIZ. All legal regulations have been incorporated.
The positive development of Portero resulted in the system being applied as the lead program in the digital workflow of CIZ at the end of 2013. When the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act (Algemene Wet Bijzondere Ziektekosten) was replaced in 2015 by the Long-Term Care Act, Portero was completely ready to be introduced.
For and by users
Portero is a registration system that has been built by and for users. Updates and new developments in administrative and legal areas are implemented in collaboration with employees. For this, CIZ uses an Agile/Scrum approach, which makes it possible to plan and carry out actions immediately. This system is being improved every day and continues to be developed, with a new release put out every three weeks. This enables employees who have submitted changes to see immediately that they are being addressed. A process has been set up in the digital workflow for these changes as well, making it possible to view what is being changed at a glance and when.
A learning organization
Each new release has a specific theme, which is either process-focused or user-focused. The system compiles all individual requests per theme. Cécile believes that Portero’s biggest advantage lies in the strong collaboration of their own IT people and information managers with Atos’ team. They are there on the work floor and know CIZ’s processes inside out. The involvement of internal and external parties allows the CIZ to continually improve Portero and it never stops learning..