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“The iO Smart was a ‘Eureka’ experience”

Harry Bos, manager and controller of the Oosterlengte healthcare chain in Winschoten, had a ‘eureka experience’ when he first encountered the iO, Nedap’s electronic homecare registration device. “Its strength lies in its simplicity", says Bos. “My task was to find a solution for time registration. There was no recompense for time spent on this in our organisation, and it did take up a lot of time. Most of the small devices, such as hand-held units, proved to be much too complex for our purposes. All we wanted was a simple way to make timesheet entries. I heard about the iO from a colleague at another care organisation. The simplicity appealed to me immediately.”

Oosterlengte is a big, combined healthcare organisation in the eastern part of the province of Groningen. Homecare is managed from a number of regional offices located in Reiderland-Scheemda, Winschoten, Bellingwedde and Oude Pekela. About 700 homecare workers are employed by Oosterlengte.

Bos continues: “Until two years ago, before the introduction of the iO, they had to fill out forms every day to account for all the visits they made, down to the minute.” The time-consuming time registration – for which they did not get paid – is now a thing of the past. Says Bos: “All it takes now is a couple of clicks.”

In his opinion, it could not be any simpler. The organisation put a lot of time and energy into the implementation of the system and the ‘unit issue sessions’ for the care workers. “We wanted to get properly organised with the iO right from the start. For me, that was a prime requirement. I certainly wasn’t prepared to compromise on that point.”

That meant that Nedap had to supply new applications six times in order to optimise the system and minimise the amount of time taken to read out the iO devices at peak times at the end of the week.

Bos recounts: “In a big organisation, introducing something new carries quite a high risk factor. If people have to wait five minutes, they quickly condemn the system as 'useless'. The iO showed up quite a lot of things; we noticed that there was a lot of 'creative timekeeping' with regard to journey times, sometimes in a positive sense, in favour of the client. Now people get exactly what they are entitled to. The iO brings everything out clearly, so there can be no more little fibs like ‘we were only there for 4 minutes’ when they were actually there for 10 minutes.”

As well as the homecare workers and clients, the administrative staff at Oosterlengte also benefit from the iO. Previously, they had to type several thousand weekly reports into the computer.

Says Bos: “People here used to spend days on inputting the reports. Now all the data goes straight into the administrative system. Our care workers are directly linked to the wages administration. Only the indirect time records, such as sickness, holidays and time in meetings, still have to be entered manually. The iO saves us a lot of administrative work and piles of paper.”