Holyoke Medical Center (HMC) is a 219-bed independent community hospital with more than 1,600 employees serving individuals and families throughout the cities and towns of the Pioneer Valley.
HMC is a nationally accredited hospital and is the first and only hospital in Western Massachusetts to obtain the prestigious accomplishment of becoming certified in the ISO 9001:2015 quality management system.
The challenge
Holyoke Medical Center Director of Information Systems Keith Pratt is responsible for leading the technical side of the IT team at the hospital. He deals with the network and server infrastructure, program access, and end user support. He and his team at HMC were looking to address HMC’s access request process.
This process was being completed with an outdated flat form, which was both manual and time-consuming. The process involved reaching out to multiple departments and continual back-and-forth communication. “We wanted something that could create intelligent flows based on our access templates and handle the legwork of the notifications for us,” said Pratt.
Why Nutrient Workflow?
As mentioned, when beginning the initial search for a workflow automation solution, HMC had a specific need for automating its access request process, so finding a customizable system to build out an existing process was a priority.
“Nutrient Workflow gave us the ability to make and refine our own workflows and processes to truly fit our unique needs.”
Holyoke Medical Center
When researching solutions, HMC found Nutrient Workflow. HMC chose Nutrient Workflow because of its robust features and ability to take an existing process and transform it into an automated workflow. Nutrient Workflow was also able to handle notifications and routing, which was something its current process was lacking. These reasons were what made Nutrient Workflow the perfect fit for Pratt and his team.
Implementation
Regardless of the organization, the implementation phase always allows companies to take a step back and analyze their current way of operating. When beginning the implementation phase, it allowed HMC to see how the company’s current process was laid out and see where any adjustments could be made when it was time to build the automated process.
That said, development, implementation, and rollout went well for Pratt and his team.
“Only a few minor tweaks were needed once we saw how things worked in reality instead of in a flow chart. This could be accomplished on the fly with Nutrient Workflow’s simple processes to upgrade and enhance workflows.”
Holyoke Medical Center
What HMC built
The new access request process is up and running at Holyoke Medical Center. It runs across the whole hospital and is used by HR, IT, and department managers putting in requests. This process has evolved to include multiple different flows. Those subset flows in the access request process include a change to an existing user process and a termination process.
“Nutrient Workflow has helped make our process faster, more accurate, and more secure.”
Holyoke Medical Center
Pratt and the team are evaluating and building other processes, like changing paper capital purchase approvals to a digital solution with Nutrient Workflow.
Results
Since the previous process didn’t record metrics, there are no specific numbers for analysis. However, HMC is pleased with the results so far. According to Pratt, using Nutrient is “more accurate and takes less time, and notifications to key players are now automated and aren’t missed.” Regardless of specific metric numbers, the results are positive.
What’s next?
Holyoke Medical Center is developing new finance workflows and refining existing ones through automation. The team is just starting its automation journey and is excited to continue to implement new processes to improve organizational efficiency.
Jonathan joined Nutrient in 2014. As CEO, Jonathan defines the company’s vision and strategic goals, bolsters the team culture, and steers product direction. When he’s not working, he enjoys being a dad, photography, and soccer.
