As the Graham Healthcare Group umbrella organization grew, the challenge of supporting multiple brands, branches and service lines from a single home office only compounded. Piecemeal efforts by individual branches to keep up-to-date healthcare forms and educational materials in stock were falling woefully short.
Our fulfillment operation grew incrementally over the course of years. First, I collaborated with our print vendor to ship new-patient packets directly to employees’ homes in lieu of storage at the branch offices. The pilot was successful and met with enthusiasm.
The next step was to improve and scale operations, from a few print products at a handful of branch offices to the entire library of print materials and miscellany shipped company-wide. Significant collaboration with our print vendor partner eventually culminated in the creation of multiple storefront websites. Numerous solutions were devised to use SSO and capture metadata to ensure that a user could only order the products appropriate to their role, and only from the storefront associated with their branch.
As the sites incrementally came online and users were informed and educated on using the new system, parallel efforts were also underway to flesh out a complete catalog of healthcare forms, education materials and other necessities for clinicians to conduct home care.
I developed a system-wide taxonomy to classify and easily identify materials by brand, service line and state, for ease of both warehousing and indexing. With more than 900 print products across about a dozen distinct storefronts, a system for change controls was also a must. A dedicated work board on Monday.com (the organization’s task management platform) kept all changes visible and assignments/expectations clear between myself and our print partner.
As the organization further grew and new branches were added, having a robust fulfillment system in place made further scaling less of a burden and helped get operations off the ground more rapidly.
Problem: With less than a week’s notice, the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) advised that a key healthcare form would be changing. After the effective date, the prior forms would be out of compliance and, if used, would jeopardize reimbursement for care. This form was already printed and waiting to be used in thousands of new-patient packets, as well as in the homes of all current patients. The clinicians who fill out these forms needed to be both educated on the necessity of the new form and equipped to use the correct one.
Solution: I leveraged a tight partnership with our print and fulfillment vendor to evaluate potential solutions in terms of both feasibility and cost. In the short term, we initiated a print/ship order of thousands of forms to be sent to every branch office. For further peace of mind, a later order was initiated to ship a small quantity to the home address of every employee who conducts patient care, along with an explanatory letter detailing the importance of using the new form. I compiled the necessary information, mailing lists and over a dozen unique print files for the vendor to effectively complete the mailings and invoice different branches for proper attribution. In the long term, all remaining stock of the new-patient packets was shipped with stacks of the new forms included, and the source files were updated for future printings.
Result: A total of 28,000 new forms arrived at branch offices prior to the effective date of the new form. The remaining stock of new-patient packets were updated as they were shipped. Responsibility ultimately fell on the employee to use the correct form, but the organization had done everything in its power to provide the necessary information and supplies to effect the change.
Bonus content: The full rundown of the week is a rollercoaster.
