Our healthcare system is under pressure. The gastroenterological clinic of Amsterdam’s city hospital OLVG is no exception. There’s simply too much work for too little people. To reduce the workload for its specialized nurses, the hospital’s gastroenterologists want to set up a digital clinic for patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. If there’s more self-service and smart monitoring, patients could drastically reduce the number of hospital visits. And thus, the nurses’ workload. But how to make time for a digital project when everyone’s already super busy?  

Easing the workload of specialized nurses   

That’s where Been Management Consulting comes in. Gastroenterologist Jeroen Janssen, who leads the clinic’s transition, asked our help to create more headspace and less workload for the nurses. We started with a short series of workshops. In the first workshop, we unraveled the current processes for patients with inflammatory bowel diseases.   

Jeroen: “Of course, we work with our protocols and systems, but consultant Daniel Brouwer brought in a new perspective. A process-perspective. He took a big brown paper and drew a big process chart together with our team. What do you do? Where does it come from? Where does it go? We found out that there’s a lot of work in double-checking each other’s work whenever we change shifts. Via IT systems, mail, face to face. It turned out we looked at the same issue four times. What a waste of time. Very confronting.” 

In the next workshops, we looked for solutions to recurring issues and designed the whole process using the LEAN process methodology. It resulted in a transparent, comprehensible, and clear process for everyone involved.

“From the clarity of the process comes a clear mind. Once we’ve made some adjustments to our IT systems, we can free up more time. And then we can finally start our next project: the digital clinic.” – Jeroen