The Dutch healthcare institution Dagelijks Leven manages 78 small-scale residential facilities for people with memory problems, and specializes in dementia cases. E-mergo supported Dagelijks Leven with the switch to TimeXtender, so that they could take control of their data warehouse themselves. “The most difficult data cases were about absenteeism and staff planning in the homes.”
Every Dagelijks Leven is home to about twenty residents, each living in their own studio. In addition, residents purchase care in the form of the reimbursed 'full package at home' (VPT in Dutch). “Normally, a nursing home is paid per resident for all care, which is not the case with us” explains Dennis Dikkerboom. “Some parts of the care provision fall under the Health Insurance Act, others under the Social Support Act (WMO in Dutch).”
Dennis has been working at Dagelijks Leven for six years as a healthcare financing and information advisor. “This separation of care and housing affects our data. We are committed to providing the best dementia care that’s affordable for everyone. That's why we want to ensure that everything we send in relation to care will benefit our residents as efficiently as possible. Therefore, we're on top of the numbers. In addition, we have to use our hours as efficiently as possible per mix of residents, so that everyone receives the right level of care.”
Dagelijks Leven also depends on organized, comprehensive data for compliance and health care inspections. “You simply must have your client tracking system and files in order,” says Dennis. “If you report correctly and the healthcare administration is correct and complete, then you know that the content and quality are also in order. At our company, it is especially important that the location manager can clearly see how things are going at his location, with the twenty residents, with the hours spent by about thirty employees and whether there is anything else that requires attention.”
Urgent Call
Until recently, Dagelijks Leven had to turn to a consultant for any change in the data warehouse. “That was the reason for us to switch to TimeXtender,” says Ingrid ten Napel, Process and Information Manager. “We wanted to be in control of our data warehouse ourselves, so that Dennis can quickly process an emergency himself. And we wanted something that was so user-friendly that someone else could also take over from Dennis. That was TimeXtender’s appeal to us.”
[...] the location managers did not notice we changed our tooling. They saw, and still see, their reports in PowerBI, and that was exactly the intention. Altogether, we now avail over 150 dashboards.”
Ingrid ten Napel - Process and Information Manager
In July 2021, Dagelijks Leven came to E-mergo with this question. “We made a Proof of Concept (PoC) in five days at the office in Apeldoorn. It was very convenient that Dagelijks Leven freed up three people for this project. You don't see that often, but this worked very well and quickly,” says E-mergo consultant Rogier Helmus. “In addition, we hired a consultant from AFAS, the provider of the financial system Dagelijks Leven uses, for a day to teach us how to read that data.”
Absenteeism
In addition to AFAS, the care registration system Nedap also had to be made accessible. “Dennis knew very well how the data in Nedap is put together, which enabled us to make progress quickly. Very handy!”, says Rogier. “The other colleagues were analysts, and we wanted them to become PowerBI experts with lots of knowledge about the processes. They knew (and know) how to run the business, and together we built the two most difficult data cases – absenteeism and the workforce mix – in the data warehouse. For the absenteeism case, we combined the sick leave notifications from AFAS with the data about absenteeism from Nedap Ons. This combination provides us deeper insights into short-term and long-term absenteeism at the care locations.”
E-mergo built a foundation for the data warehouse in the PoC with a delivered data model to easily build PowerBI reports. “According to the credo 'demonstrate, do together, do it yourself', Dagelijks Leven itself then continued to expand the data warehouse and build dashboards in PowerBI,” says Rogier. The project was completed last November. “We are already two versions further and now have access to a lot more insights,” says Ingrid. “The client data from Nedap and the financial data from AFAS are now both incorporated in PowerBI via TimeXtender. And the great thing is: the location managers did not notice that we changed the tooling. The saw, and still see, their reports in PowerBI, and that was exactly the intention. Altogether, we now avail over 150 dashboards.”
Eye-opener
“The model that facilitates location managers had priority, and this is now completed. We are just now working on gaining insight into which residents receive involuntary care. Then we move on to information about our back office, such as waiting lists”, says Dennis. He is very positive about the collaboration with E-mergo. “Rogier clearly documented the steps he took. This made it easy for us to continue the development by ourselves, following the same procedures. I was used to working with SQL, but in TimeXtender you can also make adjustments without knowledge of SQL. You can easily drag fields from one table to another. The user-friendliness of the system truly amazes me.”
“We wanted to be in control of our data warehouse ourselves, so that Dennis can quickly process an emergency himself. And we wanted a very user-friendly tool, so that someone else can take over from Dennis. That was TimeXtender’s appeal to us.”- Ingrid ten Napel, Process and Information Manager
Solution overview
Company name - Dagelijks Leven
Industry - Healthcare
Challenges
- A consultant had to be consulted for every change to the data warehouse
- Need for a more user-friendly data warehouse
Solution
- TimeXtender Data Integration
Advantages
- More user-friendly data warehouse
- Self-sufficiency
- Better data insights
About E-mergo
The name E-mergo is derived from the Latin proverb ‘Luctor et emergo’ (I struggle and emerge). In Zeeland this signifies winning the battle against water. Obviously, we do not battle water, but we do make sure that companies keep their heads above water in the growing stream of data. Working from the motto ‘Manage your data, innovate your business’ we help you to get the most out of your data.
We do this using software from Qlik, Microsoft, Mendix and TimeXtender, for which we provide software, training, consultancy and support. Together we will help your company to create new business models and to reduce costs.