Our client is a large county in Sweden and is responsible for health care for over one fifth of Sweden’s population
Client Business Challenges
- Today, paper medical certificates are handled in several stages: the doctor fills in the certificate and the patient submits it to the Swedish Social Insurance Agency where it is first scanned before finally reaching administrator, who processes the patient’s application for sickness benefit. The process is slow and complicated
- In addition, there are shortcomings in quality since a large number of the medical certificates currently sent to the Swedish Social Insurance Agency require supplementary information from the doctor. This leads to long lead times for the patient and high costs for the Social Insurance Agency
- A critical requirement for the project is to develop a process that will accommodate all concerned parties in their respective roles; doctors, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency and the patient
BearingPoint’s Contribution
- BearingPoint was assisting our client in negotiations with several different suppliers of medical record systems regarding the development of IT-support for electronic medical certificates
- BearingPoint did do testing, performing pilot projects and implementing a web application; a stand-alone solution for health care units that didn’t have the feature of electronic certificates in the electronic health record system
- The project was planning and executing communication initiatives regarding electronic medical certificates in the entire County
- The project team was working closely together with selected health care units to ensure efficient knowledge transfer to end users regarding the new solution for electronic medical certificatesx
Client Business Outcomes
- Potentially the Swedish Social Insurance Agency could save approximately 60,000 hours of work per year by reducing the number of incomplete medical records by 50% (based on an approximated time saving of 30 minutes per medical record)
- By shortening the processing times the patient would be able to get a faster decision regarding their right to sickness benefit
- By reducing the amount of incomplete medical records sent from doctors to the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, electronic medical certificates can potentially provide patients with a higher level of legal security in the form of qualitative medical certificates as base for decisions regarding the payment of sickness benefits
