“As we grow, consistency and repeatability will be important in providing high-quality customer service and keeping costs down by not reinventing the wheel every time an office opens,” says Derk Rietveld, Chief Executive Officer and Orthopaedic Surgeon at Annatommie.

Growth, lower IT costs & increased productivity

Annatommie turned to a cloud-based solution to improve their healthcare processes. With this, it can expand its patient load by 30 per cent without increasing its staff.

The centre also saves €28,000 (U.S.$36,759) annually on software licensing fees, while most employees save one to two hours a day—a value of €105,000 (U.S$138,467) a year, in more efficient communication and data access. Patient scheduling is consistent and reliable, and the Microsoft-hosted systems eliminate downtime. This also alleviates frustration and stress, increases appointment accuracy, and enables the existing staff to take on more work.

Pre-existing challenges faced

Prior to the implementation of the Microsoft-hosted system, setting up patient appointments was a hit-or-miss affair and often frustrating because the company’s third-party Web-based scheduling application was unreliable. It did not work well from all offices, appointment slots were frequently double-booked, and patients were inconvenienced by scheduling errors.

Annatommie had built a rudimentary intranet to serve these purposes and even tried to create a public portal where patients could view their files. However, the company could not cost-effectively build in the security mechanisms necessary to meet government regulations regarding patient data confidentiality, so it shut down the site.

“We wanted to implement a paperless office and centralize patient data and scheduling information so that it would be easily accessible to every employee from any location,” says Rietveld.

Management also wanted to stay focused on delivering great orthopedic services and hiring the best medical talent, and was hesitant to pour significant resources into building a massive technology and adding expensive IT professionals.

Cloud resolution and benefits

To eliminate the need for Annatommie to purchase the hardware and software to run Office SharePoint Server 2007 on-premises, speed-up solution delivery, and to lower ongoing IT costs, Annatommie worked with Tam Tam, a local Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, to subscribe to the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite from Microsoft Online Services.
 
“Microsoft Online Services gives us an easy way to grow rapidly without managing an expensive, cumbersome IT infrastructure.” Said Rietveld

The Business Productivity Online Standard Suite includes Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. These powerful enterprise communications and collaboration programs are hosted by Microsoft and delivered through partners to lower implementation costs.

With business-critical systems hosted by Microsoft Online Services, annatommie is free to grow as fast as it wants without worrying about continuously expanding an IT infrastructure or managing escalating IT expenses.

“Our systems have to be reliable, and now they are,” Rietveld says. “Microsoft Online Services gives us the reliability our employees and customers demand.”

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