24.2.2022

User experiences from Hygga Flow in Porvoo Health Center

The Hygga Flow operating model has been used at the City of Porvoo Health care Center since the beginning of 2020. The goal for the co-operation was that Porvoo Health care Center wanted to increase the efficiency of the health care center’s operations with existing resources and improve staff resilience and manageability of the operations.

The Hygga Flow operating model has brought flexibility to work even in exceptional circumstances. The model has operated on both the emergency care and the GP side for a total of 40 treatment rooms.

Benefits achieved in emergency care during a pilot year

In addition to the normal appointment, there is also an emergency reception, where significant benefits have already been achieved during the pilot year. On the emergency care the waiting time for a doctor has been reduced by more than 50% compared to the time when no urgency assessment was performed, and patients received treatment time in the order of arrival. With Hygga, immediate care has been given to those who were in need of an urgent care. For those who have not needed emergency care, it has been possible to provide a new time in an average of 5 days.

Benefits achieved on the GP

Also on the GP (appointment side), significant benefits have been achieved with the Hygga Flow model and flexible treatment times have been enabled based a need of care. A significant proportion of physicians’ treatment times take less than the usual, predetermined 30-minute treatment time. Thanks to flexible treatment times, patients receive more treatment with one visit. 80 % of the patients on GP side were treated with one visit, and there wasn’t need for a revisit.

Utilizing flexible treatment times and seamless patient flow management to streamline the use of professional resources, minimize idle time, and reduce healthcare waste, improves the operations significantly. With the same resources, doctors can provide 24% more care compared to a traditional model.

Another benefit of the model is the very short queuing times on the appointment side. At the Porvoo Health Center, the average waiting time is about 2 minutes, when the patient arrives on time from the time suggested in SMS.

Improvements can also be seen in customer communications. In addition to the fact that the customer can be called to treatment on time, taking advantage of SMS calls, the customers can also be directed to the right waiting hall smoothly through the self-registration machine and control screens, which are operated with the Hygga model. The professionals have also showed satisfaction towards working with Hygga model. 71% of the doctors who responded to the employee survey felt that stress and schedule pressures had decreased.

Our journey together has just began – it’s good to continue here!

A warm thank you to Porvoo for our cooperation so far and the valuable feedback we have received. Let’s develop further our cooperative project and improve the functionality of the Hygga model not only in the field of dental health care but also in general health care.

Want to hear more?

If you or your colleague would like to know more about Hygga Flow solution, please contact us.

Get to know our customer’s experiences of Hygga Flow in general healthcare in Porvoo. In the video below, Susanna Varilo, chief physician, and Jaana Pietiläinen, head nurse, share their experiences.

Source: The City of Porvoo Health care Centre (Näsi)