Marie Curie has compassionately cared for terminally ill people and their families for 75 years. Their network of community nurses, hospices, and passionate volunteers work closely with a network of healthcare providers to provide critical services at a patient's end of life. This can be a challenging and sensitive time for patients, carers, and families. Marie Curie aims to respond to each service referral within an hour of receiving it, but since their patient record systems are not connected, staff historically had to enter patient information multiple times before setting up an appointment. To streamline this process and ensure accuracy and speed, Marie Curie deployed intelligent automation.

Challenge

Marie Curie has nine hospices and approximately 1500 community nurses, Healthcare associates, and volunteers providing vital in-home support and rapid emergency response to their local communities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The teams also offer bereavement services, counseling, and help with household needs. Marie Curie receives urgent referrals for these services from across the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS). Referrals require a swift response, but the organization ran into an unexpected challenge when it decommissioned its main patient record system and simultaneously brought in two new systems. To ensure patient records remained accurate and referrals were received and immediately handled, staff were required to enter duplicate information into each system. Marie Curie needed a link between the systems to ensure a single, accurate patient record.

Solution

Marie Curie turned to intelligent automation (IA) to help their staff enter patient data. SS&C Blue Prism’s professional services team stepped in to create the first automation since Marie Curie’s automation team was unfamiliar with IA. While refining their automation, Marie Curie took advantage of the helpful expert advice offered by SS&C Blue Prism’s Knowledge Support services, which deliver one-on-one sessions with SS&C Blue Prism developers.

The automation team appreciated receiving answers to specific challenges, sometimes from the very developer who created the automation. Since Knowledge Support offers one-on-one sessions, Marie Curie’s developer completed the automation work while a Knowledge Support team member coached her through the process.

Now when a Marie Curie service referral is received, staff enters the patient’s data and referral ID into an SS&C Blue Prism | Interact® form. SS&C Blue Prism digital workers pick up the information from the Interact form and log into the patient record systems to enter all the pertinent details. Once the work is complete, digital workers send the referral to the nursing team for immediate action. If a new patient information pack is needed, staff can make a note in the Interact form. The information will then be forwarded to a third party, who assembles and mails the packages, an effort that saves Marie Curie 45 days each year.

Accuracy and data quality have significantly improved now that the two systems are linked. Best of all, employees have more time to speak with patients, answer questions, and share their next steps. Next, Marie Curie plans to expand their digital workforce into HR and additional patient support services to expand their healthcare automation processes.