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People & Society
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Perspective
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2 minute read

Leveraging data can help public CIOs improve efficiency

A new project in Varde Municipality highlights how data simulation tools can significantly improve efficiency for CIOs, enabling providers to deliver high-quality care while optimising their services and reducing costs.

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key takeaways
1.

Home care services are a critical component of healthcare, providing essential support to patients in their homes. However, caregivers often face challenges in managing their workload, leading to burnout and reduced quality of care.

2.

By analysing data on patient needs and preferences, as well as caregiver workload and travel time, Varde Municipality was able to optimise scheduling and routing, reduce travel time, increase efficiency, and ultimately improve the quality of care for patients.

3.

Based on similar projects in Danish municipalities, Deloitte estimates that data-driven simulation and decision-making can help reduce overall costs by 5 to 10 percent in home care services.

Data-driven home care

1240 kilometres. That is the distance the home care service of Varde Municipality must cover every day. From a provider point of view, routing, scheduling, and administration have become an increasingly complex task, with the risk of causing burnout and reduced quality of care.

Therefore, Varde Municipality engaged in a project with Deloitte to utilise data analytics to optimise their home care services and improve patient outcomes.

By analysing data on patient needs and preferences, as well as caregiver workload and travel time, the municipality was able to optimise scheduling and routing, reduce travel time, and increase efficiency.

Additionally, by automating routine tasks and streamlining workflows, caregivers were able to spend more time with patients, improving the quality of care and patient outcomes.

A significant shift in the development of home care

According to Bente Brun, head of home care services in Varde Municipality, a proper data foundation was key to unlocking the true potential:

“Of course, we know roughly how long it takes to drive from one city to another, but what about when several hundred home care workers need to drive? What about when we also add nursing care? Support? All the therapists? All the places where we need to overlap? The legislative requirements? What about parking spaces for cars? Bicycles? Meeting places?” she rhetorically asks and continues:

“The enormous complexity based on thousands of data points can be handled today in a way that gives us realistic scenarios we can work with. It is absolutely crucial that we challenge our own decisions in this way – and with a proper data foundation as a basis.”

Looking at the broader frame

While the project in Varde Municipality can serve as inspiration to CIOs as to how leveraging data can improve efficiency and reduce costs, it also highlights an important aspect of digitisation processes.

For, according to Maiken Schmiegelow, Head of Budget, Analysis, and Digitalisation in Varde Municipality, the biggest danger with new digital tools is, if you merely insert them into the context that already exists, instead of looking deeper at the looming challenges:

In Varde Municipality, it is important that we are driven by a sincere curiosity about the basic structures within which we organise our work. Of course, we want to optimise, but we would much rather transform and gain completely new perspectives on the classic welfare challenges. This is precisely where technology can contribute important knowledge. It forces us to tackle old assumptions and instead think anew.

Maiken Schmiegelow

The full interview (in Danish) with Bente Brun Jørgensen and Maiken Schmiegelow is available on Public Perspectives.