Optimized processes pave the way for optimized patient service. That’s why Northwestern Medicine is embarking on a cross-departmental Process Intelligence journey, building off of their initial success in Procurement to bring better process visibility and control to clinical areas, too.
The setting: A process area with powerful potential
In healthcare organizations, non-patient-facing functions like Procurement are not usually visible to patients and other operational functions. But the processes under Procurement’s purview have substantial potential for value generation, which often goes untapped as teams maintain the status quo.
For Hannah Koczka, VP, Northwestern Medicine Ventures and Innovation and previously Northwestern Medicine’s VP of Procurement Services, the need to evolve the organization’s own Procurement function was apparent — especially after delays and shortages battered the healthcare industry’s already-fragile supply chain in the years surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Northwestern Medicine is a large, Chicago-based health system of 11 hospitals and 600+ clinics, which means that Procurement is a complex, mission-critical process area essential to ensuring the organization can consistently meet patient needs.
The goal: Move the needle on modernization
Koczka saw how some of the team’s ways of working were coming up short, especially visible in outsized amounts of time spent doing tasks that didn’t yield much value. Though the team had made strides in implementing automation to address this, they were hitting roadblocks, and needed an accelerant to keep the work moving forward.
“We were having trouble really moving the needle on modernization and automation,” she says. “If we can take away low-value work, it would then allow the team more time to go and work on things where you do need a human.”
With all this in mind, she was determined to find opportunities to streamline Northwestern Medicine’s Procurement processes, with the goal of:
Reducing re-work,
Increasing automation,
Eliminating inessential manual touches, and
Enabling faster, more data-driven decision-making.
Taken together, Koczka knew these tactics would drive savings and free up employees’ capacity.
The only part left unclear? Where — and how — to get the insights needed to jumpstart this transformation.
The approach: Find enthusiasts who’ll find value
In 2023, Koczka chose the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform to help get an objective picture of how things actually worked within Procurement. With this new observability, her team was able to closely examine processes without relying on interviews or manual analysis.
This innovative, data-backed process visibility allowed Northwestern Medicine’s Procurement team to quickly identify and fix inefficiencies at the root-cause level, and to unlock the value waiting within their own practices.
One key part of Koczka’s success with Celonis? Ensuring the initial group of users was excited for potential change. Koczka first rolled out the platform to a task force of Procurement team members, chosen for their interest in the tech’s potential.
“They saw it as an investment and an opportunity to be part of something bigger than their day-to-day routine,” says Koczka.
These early adopters hit the ground running, found fast initial wins, and evangelized the platform to others. Per Koczka: “We were able to bring Celonis in, gain some insights pretty quickly, and then restructure the process for how that team works day to day.”
The results bear out the strategy. Within a year, the Northwestern Medicine team realized significant ROI from their work with the Celonis Process Intelligence platform, including:
An increase in touchless purchase orders (POs) by more than 38,000 (>5%) and reduction in total manual PO volume by nearly 9% — even as the total number of POs being handled grew by >5%
Half a day shaved off of requisition-to-approval turnaround times for manually-sourced POs
A reduction in rework via manual Procure-to-Pay corrections by 13% post-dispatch
Koczka envisions a future healthcare system where functions like Procurement are fully process-optimized, allowing resources to be reallocated to core operations: serving patients.
The next step: Bringing process power to patient service
In Koczka’s current role heading Northwestern Medicine’s Ventures and Innovation function, she works with with Doug King, Chief Information Officer at Northwestern Medicine, to oversee efforts to investigate and incubate new technologies for use within the Northwestern Medicine system, as well as to pilot novel ways to help patients (among many other initiatives).
As Northwestern Medicine continues leveraging Celonis in their supply chain, King and Koczka are eager to join the other healthcare providers using Celonis in the clinical space.
"As we explore new opportunities with Celonis, we're focusing on the clinical space as a critical area for transformation. The visibility provided by process mining has the potential to transform clinical workflows, optimize resource utilization, and ultimately elevate the quality of care we deliver to our patients."
Doug King, CIO, Northwestern Medicine
Northwestern Medicine has started their clinical Process Intelligence journey with a pilot in breast imaging, both because of its strategic importance within the organization and due to its position as strong proving ground for other clinical areas of interest. They’re eager to see how insights from Process Intelligence could help them better understand and serve people who need this outpatient service.
Going forward, King also believes Process Intelligence could be used to find ways to reduce patients’ length of stay by improving visibility across teams — something that could help patients across a wide variety of clinical areas within the Northwestern Medicine system.
“I really believe Celonis can help us see more patients faster,” says King. “I think if we can improve patient throughput, that'll have a dramatic impact for us on patient access.”
The bottom line? Process Intelligence can help innovation teams find ways to not only create value for the organizations they work within, but also for the patients they all ultimately serve.
In healthcare, the process revolution is just beginning. Whether in back-office functions, or more directly in clinical operations, finding ways to optimize processes will reshape how patients, providers, and everyone in between interacts with the healthcare system — for the better.
