Patient Ombudsman Case Study

The Patient Ombudsman investigates health sector complaints in Ontario, Canada. The team require an end-to-end case management solution to support their frontline team, investigators, and management in every stage of the process. Workpro is used to document and track enquiries and complaints, standardise and streamline workflows, and provide management with real-time data and reports.

Established in 2015, the Patient Ombudsman resolves complaints about health sector organisations in Ontario, from hospitals to care homes and community care.

An end-to-end case management system that could support their processes was a key requirement from day one. A robust procurement exercise led to the selection of Workpro case management software in 2016.

As the organisation has matured and evolved, their Workpro solution has adapted to changing processes and reporting needs.

End to End Case Management

• Workpro is used to document and track complaints, standardise, and streamline workflows and provide management reporting and information
• Cases can be received from a variety of sources e.g., web form, letter, e-mail, or telephone
• Validation tools ensure data is accurate and complete, saving time & reducing errors
• All documentation is securely stored within the case record for easy retrieval
• E-mail and document templates ensure consistent, professional correspondence
• Alerts and reminders prompt case progress
• Dashboards allow managers to review case progress to quickly identify any issues.

"Workpro works seamlessly across platforms as a browser-based implementation and is easy for our team to navigate. The product is also highly customizable, allowing us to reflect on how we want our workflows to operate within the system. The Workpro team has been insightful and responsive as we’ve adapted the system to our changing needs over time."

Learning and Improvement

Workpro’s key strength is the level of management information provided by the system. The insights gained from the data collected are vital for learning and improvement initiatives. Workpro supports the Patient Ombudsman to:

• Capture and record every case and its outcome for reporting purposes
• Categorise data during the workflow, for trend tracking and analysis.

Web Form Integration

An online submission form was developed for the Patient Ombudsman to allow complainants to easily record a complaint using a web form.

Upon submission, the complainant is immediately provided with a case reference number and a case is automatically created in the Workpro complaints management system.

The complainant is guided on the web form to provide the right information, selecting items from lookup lists, such as the health service organisation they have an issue with. The case is pre-populated with this information, avoiding the need for staff to type in details from a paper form. This saves time and removes the risk of manual errors.

Cloud-based case management

With Canadian in-country hosting now available, Patient Ombudsman is moving from an on-premise server to a cloud-hosted solution for their Workpro system. This ensures the Patient Ombudsman can benefit from lower hosting costs as well as:

• A more easily scalable solution – it’s easy to increase (or decrease) resources in the hosted environment.
• Built-in “redundancy” - all components have fail-over backups.
• A single-stop shop for managing the infrastructure and the application. The Workpro team manage the entire platform leading to better system performance and faster fix/response times for issues and requests.

“Workpro was selected following an open, competitive procurement process. In addition to meeting our technical requirements, we were impressed by the user feedback provided by current Workpro clients. Workpro emerged as the solution to best serve our needs. We have enjoyed a close working relationship with the Workpro team and very much appreciate their support and expertise. “