The opportunity:
Streamline resource planning with the aim of delivering the best patient care as quickly as possible.
With over 60,000 planned surgeries a year and multiple emergency procedures required daily, Oslo University Hospital, like many healthcare providers, was oversubscribed and struggling with finite resources. Optimal management of these resources was critical to meet patient demands and deliver against future needs.
By selecting KPMG in the Norway and ServiceNow to fine-tune their logistical planning, Oslo University Hospital put the needs of their patients at the core of their decision making. KPMG leveraged ServiceNow’s flexible, cloud-based platform to build ‘health flow optimizer’ — a platform designed to enable Oslo University Hospital to streamline patient flow and scheduling across all of their facilities.
Administrators were wrestling with numerous manual scheduling systems and a complex arrangement of competing workflows and processes. Each surgery took up to an hour to plan, and each year, around 3,000 of these were cancelled.
Oslo University Hospital believed that effective and efficient planning that could be delivered by technology transformation could help to drive down delays and cancellations and have a dramatic impact on the efficiency of the hospital.
In response, KPMG and ServiceNow developed a tech-enabled solution in collaboration with Oslo University Hospital that helped to automate workflows and streamline processes that could fundamentally free up time and other resources to enable staff to focus on what’s most important — the care of their patients.
Our response:
A cloud-based solution to optimize the resources available at any one time.
KPMG teams worked with functional healthcare professionals and collaborated closely with Oslo University Hospital to create a health flow optimizer to automate and digitize surgery scheduling processes.
Leveraging the ServiceNow Platform with low/no-code development tools for extensibility, the health flow optimizer was designed to deliver benefits that extend well beyond surgical planning.
Its ability to automate and streamline processes and workflows means that it can have a positive effect on patient outcomes and experiences, and those of the clinical teams working at the hospital.
With the integration of a cloud-based digital twin, the hospital can simulate and prepare for contingencies, develop plans and build confidence in facing scenarios such as a sudden influx of patients. Knowing the hospital’s pinch points in this way also helps capacity planning in areas like personnel, operating theatres and equipment, and eases the complexity of future investment planning, too.
The potential doesn’t end there, as KPMG, with ServiceNow, has made it possible for advanced use cases with machine learning and predictive analytics to be added to further improve patient outcomes and experiences, and clinician experiences.
The outcome:
Streamlining surgical planning and leveraging new revenue streams.
With the help of KPMG in Norway and ServiceNow, Oslo University Hospital is well on its way to reaching its operating theatre productivity targets. The hospital has a single surgery scheduling platform tailored to areas where there is potential for automation, and integrated with existing hospital systems, including eHR systems.
The current target for the project is to achieve a 14% increase in the utilization of its operating theatres, resulting in a potential increased income of USD 35 million per year.
It’s a testament to the value of transformation, and the health flow optimizer is capable of much more than just scheduling surgeries. It has the ability to improve patient communication and security, identify procedures most at risk of cancellations with intelligent algorithms, model scenarios for industry best practice, reduce administrative burdens and bottlenecks, and even manage the proliferation of medical devices.
This patient-centric transformation continues to harness the power of AI to reduce administrative workloads and automate workflows, to decrease bottlenecks and enhance data accuracy. It enables staff to use data, stored securely in the cloud, to further guide processes and deliver better patient outcomes and more enjoyable clinician experiences, allowing experienced and knowledgeable clinicians to focus on patient care, not administrative roadblocks.
The strategic vision for Oslo University Hospital will involve the building of AI agents that are transparent, ethical, secure and aligned with the goal of further improving patient care and expeditious outcomes, aiming to enhance confidence and trust in the organization and its partners.
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KPMG has developed a portfolio of tech solutions leveraging the ServiceNow Platform that enable KPMG firms to build secure, modern and trusted digital experiences with clients to best serve clinicians and patients.
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