CASE STUDY - Fresenius Medical Care

Fresenius Medical Care is a leading provider of products and services for individuals with renal diseases

Around the world, more than 3.7 million patients regularly undergo dialysis, a vital blood cleansing procedure that substitutes the function of the kidney in case of a kidney failure. Operating out of its main headquarters in Germany, Fresenius runs a network of more than 4,000 dialysis clinics and supplies dialysis products to over 150 countries worldwide.

Executive Summary:

In the Philippines, Fresenius Kidney Care operates a network of 24 dialysis centers in Metro Manila, Davao, and North Luzon, and has served 300,000 patients in global since its inception. To continue serving its patients efficiently and to maximise its resources, Fresenius saw the need to digitise its patient records. 

The Challenge: Fresenius Kidney Care tapped DBSA to assist in scanning its financial and medical records from 2016 to 2019, converting these paper based documents into digital files that are stored securely in a cloud and easily searchable and pulled up when needed. The three years’ worth of records was a high-volume transaction, consisting of 5 to 6 pages of documents per transaction, and these needed to be completed at a set deadline. In addition to the volume of work, the locations of the clinics also posed a challenge. It would be impossible to carry out the scanning work centrally, given that the clinics were located in various parts of the country. The current COVID-19 situation added an additional layer of complexity. Not only was there no space to do scanning at the Fresenius clinics, but with the Philippines under quarantine, mobility was also limited, which meant access to files and retrieval of documents in clinics and branches nationwide needed to be planned efficiently. DBSA Save TIME and SPACE DOCUMENT DIGITISATION 

The Solution 

DBSA applied due diligence to understand the challenge and come up with a solution. The team conducted ocular visits and interviewed the team to fine-tune a plan while ensuring that it met the deadline. The project covered multiple sites in Metro Manila, where Fresenius Kidney Care had clinics, as well as Davao and North Luzon, where DBSA already has a local presence. To adhere to workplace restrictions and safety protocols, the DBSA team decided to do all the scanning work at their headquarters while deploying team members on the ground to do simultaneous scanning in Davao and Luzon. 

The Results 

DBSA completed the entire digitisation program within 3.5 months, meeting the client’s deadline while delivering the entire project at a discounted and cost-effective rate. By the end of the project, DBSA team members had completed scanning 267,176 pages, creating 129,936 PDF documents, and renaming 389,808 search index files. The head office staffs and third-party consultants were able to conduct their audit within schedule. The DBSA team was able to securely backup all the files and store them on the cloud, while ensuring that the documents could easily be searched and accessed, to enable Fresenius Kidney Care to comply with regulatory requirements. For some time, the Digos clinic had only one scanner, so tapping DBSA to help out with the scanning work kept the clinic updated with its patient records. Despite working on a tight schedule, Jan Lester found the team “accommodating and approachable.” Seeing the benefits of digitised files, John recommended that this be done monthly to enable Fresenius to submit complete records to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation and to comply with audit requirements.