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Where could Health New Zealand start?
Immediate opportunities to deliver more value for the business include:
- People processes – At approximately 100,000 people, Health NZ has the largest workforce of any organisation in Oceania. Standardising and automating basic HR processes, including onboarding/offboarding, asking for travel assistance and requesting leave, would not only take out costs but could also improve security and the employee experience. Having a single, automated offboarding process would ensure people’s access to internal systems is turned off when they leave the organisation. A consistent experience would also help to create a more unified culture.
In Canada, a leading healthcare provider has selected ServiceNow and EY Canada to transform its HR function, starting with automating the onboarding journey and associated processes. The expected benefits include improved productivity for new joiners, better visibility of the recruitment pipeline and strategic workforce requirements, and process optimisation.
Onboarding of staff could be further enhanced by leveraging AI to develop differentiated learning solutions that are tailored to a specific role and geography / district. Through customised and engaging learning experiences, staff can have accelerated impact and rapid upskilling. All this can be delivered through a platform with dynamic content to suit the learners needs.
- Software asset management – In parallel to off-boarding automation, licence optimisation would avoid over-licensing and remove redundant or obsolete software, cutting unnecessary expenses. It would identify and support the risk mitigation of under-licensing, which often involves significant financial penalties. In turn, getting the licence counts right, and negotiating on organisation-wide licence volumes, could also allow Health NZ to get more favourable terms from vendors.
- Process digitisation and automation – Health systems have multiple areas, including booking and scheduling, requests for information, legal workflows and work allocation, where process digitisation and automation could substantially reduce costs. As just one example, automated outpatient scheduling and reminders not only remove an administrative burden but have also been shown to reduce the financial waste of ‘no-shows’. In the NHS, the cost of ‘no-shows’ has been calculated at £1.2 billion in 2021-22 with 6.4% of appointments missed, further exacerbating waiting times and patient outcome deterioration. Online booking and smart scheduling, powered by AI, has seen a 30% fall in non-attendances in a pilot, with more investment committed by the NHS to build on initiatives that reduce ‘no-shows'[1].
In Australia, health departments are finding opportunities to leverage technology to optimise administrative processes at a function level. In finance, customer engagement and financial reimbursement processes have been digitised, enabling an enhanced customer experience, transparent reporting and process efficiencies of more than 30% driven by automation and prioritisation. At the same time, in-house legal functions are implementing digital portals for internal end users, and automating and optimising work intake, allocation and delivery to increase productivity and reduce the costs of outsourced legal services.