Docrates

Challenge

Docrates is the only full-service private cancer hospital in Northern Europe. Individual care, innovations and a quick admission for treatment set Docrates apart from others in the field. What makes the customer experience so good is the hospital’s ability to provide compassionate service that makes every patient feel that they are the most important one.

During the actual treatment, the Acute patient record system is used for procedure monitoring. However, the customer experience starts long before the treatment when the potential customer first contacts Docrates Cancer Center.

“We wanted to particularly support our work in this first stage of the customer relationship with a modern, easy-to-use CRM system,” says Jani Mikkola, Commercial Director at Docrates, who was responsible for the project.

New CRM frees up time for personalized service

For the Docrates staff, it is important that the customer feels important and cared for right from the first contact. Customers have given the team excellent reviews:

• 94% of customers are very satisfied with the treatment and service.
• The NPS score is 94 (September 2023). 

To maintain such a high level of customer satisfaction, the nurses and doctors must put a significant amount of time in personalized service. The hospital staff wanted more time for this human interaction: “One of the main goals of our CRM project was getting rid of parallel systems, across which information on new, potential customers was scattered,” explains Mikkola. 

Smooth and professional service 

Docrates Cancer Center gets 1,600 new patients a year. Potential customers contact Docrates via website forms, chatbot, email and phone service. 

During treatment, Docrates also gets numerous inquiries and requests from patients regarding, for example, billing, insurance coverage or different documents. It was impossible to enter them all in the old patient record system. 

“We were no longer able to record the communication with our customers and process their data with sufficient integrity and efficiency, which was taking time away from more valuable work. The fragmentation was also hindering reporting and the planning of customer communication,” describes Mikkola. 

Streamlining work and improving service quality were the key objectives of the CRM project. Starting with the first contact, new patients communicate with nurses who understand the cancer treatment process and the sensitive issues often related to it. This way, the patients get their questions answered by skilled professionals right from the start. This is the work for which Docrates wanted more time.

The solution

The implementation was not rushed into. The design, in which Docrates’ staff was included, formed a large part of the project. Docrates wanted to particularly improve the customer journey of international patients, as it includes various stages of data collection, ensuring that the created treatment plan is as individual as possible.

As a result of the design, Fellowmind’s specialists provided the Docrates CRM system with two different treatment journeys: one for Finnish and another for international patients. The reason for this is that these two groups differ in terms of use cases, data to be collected, and communication needs.

A two-way integration between the patient record system Acute and Dynamics 365 was built during the project. Thanks to the integration, data now flows automatically in both directions, enabling seamless sharing between the two systems. 

“The doctors and nurses manage the patients’ diagnostic data and procedures in Acute, whereas data related to customer relationships can now be supplemented or changed in either Acute or Dynamics and the relevant data is synchronized automatically. For instance, patients’ background information can now be accessed with just one click, and the information is immediately updated in both systems,” says Mikkola.

Strict data protection and security requirements

Since the CRM system was to include some patient data, all the official requirements set for patient record systems had to be met when building the Dynamics solution. Dynamics is one of the few CRM systems enabling strong data security, data protection and compliance. “It was, of course, really important to us that the solution should meet all the health care-related data security and data protection requirements right from the start,” says Mikkola.

The solution also included a two-way integration to the MyDocrates portal, a digital service channel for patients. The customers can use the portal, for example, to make appointments and manage their consent preferences. The project also met data retention requirements, as the system was integrated with a backup solution for the long-term storage of essential information. 

At the end of the project, a data migration was carried out. In the migration, the customer data was transferred from the old systems to the new without interrupting care work at any point.  

New CRM system in six months 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and Dynamics 365 Sales were selected as the platform solutions. This combination was then supplemented with Azure integration tools. 

Particular attention was paid to usability and smooth workflow, implemented using Microsoft Power Apps. The result was a unified platform with integrations for all the essential functions. 

Fellowmind built the technically challenging solution quickly. The CRM system was designed and implemented during a project that lasted for six months. 

The results

Now Docrates’s CRM system has separate processes and supporting integrations for Finnish and international customers. The solution keeps the nurses up to date on the contacts received by Docrates and the conversations had with customers, so it is easier for them to just pick up the conversations with customers from where they were left off.

“The new solution helped us get rid of many manual work steps in customer service. Thanks to the integrations, we now have direct and easy access to all the data in different systems, and the workflow is smoother than before. Now we have a modern way of operating and strong security, supported by technology,” says Mikkola.

Foundation for future growth

Unfortunately, as the population ages, the number of cancer cases also increases. By operating in a modern and scalable way, Docrates can admit and treat more patients, meeting them as individuals and with compassion.

“Switching from separate applications to a single CRM platform helped us save time, improve data integrity and customer experience and create a foundation for future growth,” says Mikkola.

At Docrates, patients have always been admitted for treatment quickly. Customers only have to wait a few days to get a doctor’s appointment, and within a week of that, they will already have a diagnosis and an individual treatment plan. This promise can now also be kept even when the number of customers increases and operations become more international. 

In customer communication, the new system helps the Docrates staff understand the needs of potential customers better and approach them in the right way and with the right message. The system has also facilitated the monitoring of customer communication and enabled more detailed services analysis. ”The new solution guarantees high-quality service also with an increasingly larger number of customers,” says Mikkola.

CRM system extended to calls

What are Docrates’s plans for the future, then?

The new CRM solution is currently in the small-scale development phase, and feedback on the system is being collected from the medical staff in weekly and monthly meetings.

The next area of development is the telephone system. The system, which will be acquired from a third party, will be integrated into Dynamics and included in the same platform solution.

“For our growth journey, we needed a partner who can integrate all the channels and collaborate with us to also develop the work processes and not only provide technology. For us, Fellowmind is that partner,” concludes Mikkola

Docrates Cancer Center is a Finnish cancer hospital in Helsinki that also has international customers. It provides cancer patients with individual service throughout the treatment chain, from diagnostics to follow-up. In 2022, Docrates’s turnover was EUR 26 million. The hospital employs almost 80 professionals specializing in diagnostics and cancer treatment as well as over 30 self-employed persons with special expertise in oncology and support services.