Bergman Clinics is a specialist medical care provider, focused on plannable care pathways. Quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction go hand in hand. To remain sufficiently scalable, the customer contact environment had to be modernized. Before engaging a system integrator, Bergman Clinics first had independent advice drawn up.

 

Due to the aging and growth of our population, the costs of our medical care have now risen to more than 100 billion euros per year. If policy remains unchanged, one in four people would have to work in healthcare by around 2040 – an unfeasible and unaffordable scenario. Reason why medical care needs to be overhauled. That is why a regulated form of market forces was introduced in 2006. One of the first organizations to join this is Bergman Clinics, started in 1988 as a cosmetic surgery clinic. Since 2006, Bergman Clinics has offered plannable, specialist medical care that is fully reimbursed. The range of treatments is wide, but the leaders are knee, hip and eye operations.

Challenges

Bergman Clinics has grown significantly over the past decade: now ten times as large as it was eleven years ago Ivo Piest, Chief Development Officer and Executive Board Member at Bergman Clinics. During this time, the company has invested heavily in optimizing medical processes and the quality of treatments. The patient has certainly not been lost sight of, on the contrary. The company scores high marks when it comes to customer satisfaction. Part of that success is, on the one hand, standardizing and concentrating medical treatments; and on the other hand, managing patient expectations as best as possible. “If you organize your processes tightly, it is also easier to meet customer expectations,” says Piest.

Tightly plan the medical process

Piest explains how Bergman views medical processes: “We try to do the parts of the preliminary process – in particular intake, examination, diagnostics, treatment plan and sometimes even planning the procedure – in one day as much as possible. During the procedure itself, you sometimes stay here an extra day, sometimes you can go home straight away. Depending on the treatment, the patient returns for a check-up on average after a few weeks and we actively work on optimal recovery in between and afterwards. Another example of process optimization is entering medical data such as age, weight and pain complaints in the digital patient files. You can have this done by a doctor during the first consultation, but you can also ask the patient to complete the questions the evening before the first consultation hour, so that you can focus the conversation during the consultation hour on the complaints and treatment. let go."

Smart organizing

Smart organization is the starting point of Bergman's model. The company calls this value-based healthcare. An important part of this approach is the value for the patient: after all, a healthcare provider like Bergman Clinics cannot exist without satisfied patients.

Just like medical care, you can also 'optimize' customer satisfaction, Piest is convinced. Inform your customers about what the journey looks like, what the different steps are, but also what someone can expect after a procedure. When having a knee replacement, it can sometimes happen that you get a bruise on your buttock after 4 or 5 days. Those who know that worry less.

Constant contact with the patient

Operating large volumes in plannable care with high customer satisfaction, which means that high demands are placed on contact with the patient. Piest explains: “For all treatments, we measure what our customers think at seven contact moments in the process. How did the intake go? How did information provision go? How clear was the diagnosis? How is your treatment? How satisfied were you with the aftercare? We have a lot of relevant data per medical specialist and per team. We use that data to continuously optimize by learning from each other and exchanging best practices.”

The result of this continuous optimization is that the treatments provided by Bergman are more efficient than those provided by regular hospitals, which translates into a lower rate for insurers.

Touchpoints and emotions mapped out

Bergman has also mapped out all touchpoints for the most important treatments, including all associated emotions. “We know at which times patients can be nervous, anxious, euphoric, satisfied or dissatisfied,” Piest explains. “We also know that those who sit at home for a few days after a procedure often start to feel less well. People then worry. Part of the optimization is that for a few years now our patients have been able to indicate their pain status several times a day via an app. The app is directly connected to the medical specialist and the team. If the pain experience does not match what is associated with the procedure, we will call you immediately. You can reduce the risk of complications and also learn from them – perhaps the specialist should adjust the post-operative pain medication or recovery exercises?”

Centralize customer contact

The philosophy of Bergman Clinics is that everything that is not patient-related is organized centrally. This also applies to customer contact. That makes it easier to grow and scale. But it is not the intention that the customer contact department – ​​which now has around 200 employees – grows accordingly with the organization. “Analyses showed that almost half of the contacts relate to making or rescheduling appointments. In our opinion, this is something you can arrange with a self-service environment or app. But that does place demands on your application landscape: everything must be properly interconnected, so that you can prevent double bookings.”

Advice on eliminating IT debt

When Bergman wanted to take new steps in further optimizing customer contact, the company encountered technical limitations or 'IT debt'. “The existing telephony infrastructure turned out to be outdated, which would make integration with the Bergman App and an EPD and expansion with new channels very expensive. That is why we asked XPRNZ halfway through to provide advice on revamping the customer contact environment. We needed an independent view of technological solutions in relation to our vision on customer contact.”

XPRNZ started conducting interviews and analyzes in 2022. Freek Jansen visited the contact center to get a good idea of ​​the processes and spoke with employees, managers and innovation and IT managers. “XPRNZ also examined our vision on customer contact and then drew up a program of requirements and asked suppliers who could offer a solution.”

“These are employees who will soon have to use new technology”

It is essential in such an analysis process that attention is not only paid to technology, but that the human side is also understood: it is employees who will soon have to work with that technology, according to Piest. The ability to connect with people contributes to the quality of such an analysis. But it is also part of taking a critical look at adjacent processes: how many exceptions in otherwise standardized processes do you want to allow? Questions come from somewhere and to answer them, agents need to have something to fall back on. “XPRNZ then came up with a number of possible solutions and helped select the best partner.”

The results

After XPRNZ's advice, a new platform was implemented - "We ultimately chose Talkdesk," says Piest. “We have been live for a few months now and, as a result of the changes in processes and technology, we already see that the average call duration has decreased. This is partly because employees can find information more quickly. We also see that there are fewer transfers - partly by providing the contact center with more information. That is only the first step we have taken, because the program is not ready yet. We think that many administrative tasks can still be removed, both for the patient or client and for ourselves.”

The Bergman Clinics roadmap

Bergman still has all kinds of things on the agenda, such as linking new channels such as WhatsApp and integrating the Bergman App. “Over the next few years we have a significant series of changes on the agenda that we want to implement – ​​it is good to see that there is now a solid foundation for this.” (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

 

About Bergman Clinics – Bergman Clinics has been active in specialist medical care with focus clinics for 35 years. Bergman Clinics now consists of more than 60 focus clinics with branches in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany. Plastic surgeon (Robert) Bergman started Bergman Clinics in 1988 as a clinic for cosmetic surgery with the aim of making cosmetic surgery accessible to the general public. Since 2006, Bergman Clinics also offers insured care that is fully reimbursed.

Case, Customer Experience, Featured XPRNZ