In many countries, healthcare organizations have hard times ahead because of the issues in their current healthcare systems. In Finland, there are significant problems in the overall patient flow management, which is painfully visible, for example, in joint emergency departments. According to the statistics of the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare (THL), emergency department visits in primary healthcare and joint emergency departments have increased by 10.1% and at the same time, the number of long-term clients in health centers has grown by over 21% from 2019 to 2021. These problems have a horizontal impact on the entire treatment chain from access to primary healthcare to finding follow-up treatment. 

Finland seeks to solve these problems by regulation. The treatment time guarantee will change in September 2023 when the waiting time will be reduced to 14 days and at the end of 2024 it will be reduced to 7 days. Access to primary healthcare plays a crucial role in solving the challenges of emergency departments, but it’s equally important to ensure patients’ smooth access to follow-up treatment to reduce the pressure on the overloaded emergency services. 

Do you know what computers are good at? Computing. Do you know what optimization is? A mathematical problem. 

Healthcare service production requires careful planning, and the larger the unit sizes become, the larger is the planning effort required. What does it take to produce efficient healthcare services? In simple terms, patients and professionals need to encounter in the same location – and this location also needs to offer the equipment and materials required, no matter if they’re related to diagnostics, care, or medication.

Shift.xlsx, annual plan.xls, resource planning Excel, mighty Excel, smart Excel... The world revolves around spreadsheets. These magical inventions are the primary planning tools in almost every organization. Why? Let’s take a closer look at where Excel works well, and the areas where it’s about time to give up using it for efficient healthcare resource management.

What are the key reasons for our customers to implement Axel? The answer is divided in two - for the soft and hard benefits our solution offers. Common soft benefits include improving the patient experience, modernizing the user experience, or increasing operational transparency. Today, however, we are diving into the world of hard benefits – including numbers, spreadsheets, and euros.

Excel is used for various purposes in business processes all around the world. This classic solution is very flexible, but it can also become an extremely tedious tool to use – at the latest when the company grows. In many healthcare organizations, resource planning is usually run on Excel. Is this really the most efficient way to do this important planning work or would there be other options?

The idea of digitalization, automation, and self-service solutions is to reduce employees' workload and routine tasks and to allow them to focus on more meaningful work. Especially in the healthcare sector, there is a clear need for automation - the main task of healthcare professionals is to care for patients and to spend as little time as possible on non-essential bureaucracy and paperwork.