Tactus
From laggard to leader: how Tactus Addiction Care is leading the way in healthcare digitisation with help from IT-Councelor and Previder
Tactus is a large addiction care institution in the eastern Netherlands with 1,300 employees and, in addition to its headquarters in Deventer, 43 branches in the eastern Netherlands. Tactus would like to strengthen its leading position in addiction care, but ran into limits within the organisation. After all, being in the lead also means being able to keep up with new developments, such as providing care 24/7, working with client data and facilitating staff in good facilities that meet their expectations. The digitalisation of care demands something of your IT environment. The existing environment simply couldn't cope. How do you move from this backlog to a leading position?
For Arnoud Geerts, Project Manager Digital Healthy at Tactus, one thing was clear: "The IT organisation needs to better match the care and needs that exist on the work floor. This means that change in IT needs to be approached jointly. With feedback from the care sector, you can ensure that IT really supports the processes." Tactus found in IT-Councelor the IT service provider that matches this vision and in house supplier Previder the right IT partner to build and manage the new IT environment.
Current maturity of IT
With proven methodologies, experts in the field and a focus on the healthcare employee, IT-Councelor set to work with the first step: taking the thermometer in. How mature is the organisation in terms of IT? IT appeared to be working and running, but was not up to date. The environment no longer adequately supported employees and certainly did not ensure that Tactus could make strides in digitisation. Marten Jan Scheffers, ROI Manager at IT-Councelor, says: "We saw several bottlenecks. Applications were not working together optimally, processes were not sufficiently customer-centric, there was data that was not up-to-date everywhere and from which the desired value could not be extracted, and IT did not meet employees' expectations."
Building Tactus' IT house
The assessment has been made, but how to move forward? "We decided to look at a new situation where IT better supports healthcare. That means building an IT house together. Then you don't start right at the foundation, but first talk to “the residents” about the requirements and wishes. The IT house consists of five components. The first is steering: how do I organise IT, do I steer it and do we get a connection with healthcare? Then comes operations: how do I set up IT, what do I do myself and what do I outsource? Then functionality: what do I need to carry out work processes? The fourth component is information: what do you have, how do you access it and how do you keep it up-to-date in all systems? Finally, you look at the technology, which has to enable all the aforementioned elements," Scheffers explains.
We scouted the market and the party we have worked with for years, Previder, quickly rolled out. They have everything in-house and have a proven track record.
The need to take the brakes off
The IT maturity measurement showed that Tactus' basic platform was a brake that hindered innovation. Geerts says: "Applications were running on outdated hardware, which meant that our intranet, for example, would not remain supported. Nor could we make video calls in Teams, because Citrix does not provide image and sound. Moreover, our server farm was local and support on it was in danger of lapsing, posing risks in terms of continuity and security. Not to mention equipment that in some cases was more than eight years old." Enough reason to accelerate the replacement of the base platform. "We wanted to move to one central environment where servers and applications run. In addition, workstations, the network in all branches and telephony had to be renewed," explains Scheffers. "Because Tactus wanted to grow from its own IT management to a directorial role, we looked for an IT party to facilitate all these elements. That way, you avoid wasting a lot of time on supplier management." Geerts adds: "We explored the market and the party we have been working with for years, Previder, quickly rolled out. They have everything in-house and have a proven track record. Previder came up with a good proposal to our RFP on how to move forward with IT and achieve our goals. The financial picture was also satisfactory."
Building on good technology
André Stokkingreef, Key Account Manager at Previder, talks about Tactus' new IT environment. "Working together with Tactus and IT-Counceler was very pleasant. They took us into the strategy and wishes from the healthcare sector, so that we were able to devise and manage the right solutions from a technical point of view. We set up the digital care workplace to properly support the care staff and enable digitisation of care. A lot of attention was paid to adoption: employees learned how to work with the new technology so that they could get the most out of it. In addition, there are now fast connections between all Tactus branches in the Netherlands, the environment is running safely and stably in our data centre, there is reliable wifi-as-a-service, a good firewall, laptops have been delivered and telephony works as desired. Together, we made sure Tactus stayed up and running during the implementation. For Tactus, it is valuable to have one point of contact for all these IT services: that is Previder." The foundation for further change, digitalisation and achieving Tactus' goals has been laid.
Digital Healthy was an extensive and complex project for us to get an updated IT environment. I would like to compliment IT-Councelor and Previder for their professional advice and support in this regard.
An organisational and cultural change takes time
Now we are looking further into organisational change. Scheffers says: "Rolling out the full strategy takes time. Outsourcing the IT operation and keeping control in-house has been successful. But we want to ensure that healthcare and IT are jointly responsible for the result, that new functionalities are adopted and that the IT organisation is further professionalised. This is a long-term process to which we are devoting a lot of attention." Contact and steering remain important in this process. This is why Tactus, IT-Councelor and Previder regularly sit around the table to discuss the state of affairs and changes in the healthcare market. Johan Hollebrandse, Director of Operations at Tactus, underlines the need for assurance: "Digitaal Gezond was a large and complex project for us to get an up-to-date IT environment. I want to compliment IT-Councelor and Previder for their professional advice and support in this regard. The goal of Digitally Healthy is that the new IT increasingly adds value to the processes of care and support. To achieve that goal, we in the organisation must continue to ensure that Tactus employees make ever better use of the digital possibilities. There is still work to be done!"
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