A large healthcare analytics client of Vee Healthtek had a problem. How could they provide quality assurance (“QA”) to hundreds of thousands of scanned images in a six-week period? It wasn’t feasible for the client to hire staff for such a short-term project or train temporary personnel because of concerns relating to quality and speed to market. They turned to Vee Healthtek for a solution.
The client needed QA reviews of scanned images to make certain the image quality was acceptable, ensuring its automated optical character recognition (“OCR”) engines could capture good data. If the images were not of acceptable quality or were blank, they needed to know quickly while their scanning technicians were still onsite and, in a position, to correct any deficiencies. In previous years, the client had many blank images slip through the process, resulting in increased workload and additional fees to their clients.
One of the challenges included the client not knowing the exact volume of images that would require review. It was possible the number of images requiring review could reach a few hundred thousand. In addition, Vee Healthtek was faced with time restraints because the project’s completion deadline was exactly six weeks from the time they were first contacted by the client.
Vee Healthtek worked with the client to analyze the process and develop a solution. Neither company wanted to hire additional resources for this short-term project because of the costs, timing and logistics involved in that process. While Vee Healthtek does employ an excess bench of trained resources, that bench would not be large enough for the projected amount of volume for this immediate project. Vee Healthtek determined the most cost-effective solution, which would still provide high-quality results, was to use its existing staff and have them work extra hours on nights and weekends. This provided an immediately available workforce that was highly educated and could be trained quickly on the process.
With a stringent deadline for completion, Vee Healthtek engaged its workforce across multiple business units and three delivery centers in three cities. Because of the critical time component, we could not risk running all the work out of one facility. Any delays from a regionalized outage would cause missing the deadline. A business continuity plan was implemented with staff located in multiple cities in India. Each city was carefully chosen so that a localized disaster would not impact more than one location, yet close enough to transport the employees via train or car to another location. Each location already had excess housing for employees in preparation for any incidents. Within the first week, Vee Healthtek mobilized and trained a staff of 330 employees.
Production efforts were led by the Assistant General Manager. He took point with daily coordination of volumes and quality levels with the client. Under his direction and leadership, managers from the billing group, the insurance group, and the logistics area (each of whom had been with Vee Healthtek for more than 17 years and were experienced in managing large teams of employees) were engaged to manage the teams of employees.
The first week of production got off to a late start as the client worked through the logistics of transferring the work to Vee Healthtek. By week two we were processing over 300,000 images in off hours – nights and weekends – while the staff maintained their daily duties. Even with overtime rates and employee bonuses, this was the most cost-effective approach for the client. By week three, completed volumes more than doubled to over 700,000 images. Over the next two weeks, the remaining balance of work was completed.
Over a six-week period (one week of contracting and setup followed by five weeks of production), Vee Healthtek processed over 1.5 million images at a quality rate of over 98% accuracy.
Vee Healthtek was able to implement a flexible on-demand staffing solution for a client with an immediate business need. The solution solved a critical short-term problem for the client without sacrificing quality. In addition, the business continuity plan tied to the offering provided a risk mitigation engagement.
The client was able to meet their contractual deadlines through the unique staffing approach provided by Vee Healthtek.
