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How The US Government Connects Care Providers With Those in Need
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Across the US, over 70 million people live in rural areas without regular access to medical care. Over several years, we partnered on the digital transformation of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to strengthen the health workforce and connect them to communities in need. Our solutions, including the Health Workforce Connector, have enabled more than 21,000 healthcare providers to serve more than 21 million patients.

Client

Health Resources and Services Administration

Services
Customer Experience & Design
Technology & Engineering
Data & Artificial Intelligence
Product Management
Industry
Public Sector
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The Imperative for Change

HRSA’s loan repayment and scholarship programs help bring doctors and nurses into these high-need communities, but outdated systems and manual processes made it difficult to scale, track impact and respond quickly to public health emergencies. When Congress significantly increased funding for these programs, Publicis Sapient was engaged to help scale HRSA’s operations and systems to deliver a more robust, needs-based health workforce. 

The Transformative Solution

Informed by a deep understanding of their people, process and technology context, we improved the user experience, establishing a web-based digital platform to replace a 35-year-old mainframe system and more than 23 legacy applications. This platform created a customer-centric digital environment and optimized interaction channels. HRSA gained operational efficiencies (application processing time has decreased by 30 percent), completely paperless operations and millions of dollars in savings. A robust data management program was also established (leveraging data engineering, data science and data visualization) to help the client gain critical insights for strategic investments and data-driven policies to maximize impacts in communities. We applied:

  • Human-centered design
  • Agile principles
  • Adaptive planning
  • Evolutionary development
  • Continuous process improvement
  • Business process reengineering
  • Carefully orchestrated change management

The Business Impact

HRSA is now well-prepared to respond quickly to emerging public health emergencies with the ability to project potential impact on specific communities and map associated resources to address anticipated needs. Programs have since expanded from four to 10, increasing responsiveness to health crises like Zika and the opioid epidemic.

They’ve proactively influenced policies and programs that promote health equity and data-driven decision-making, significantly increasing positive health outcomes and expanding access to medical professionals for over 21 million patients. Today, 85 percent of health care providers supported by these programs remain in underserved areas past their required term.

21,000
health providers now serve 21 million patients
85%
of clinicians remain in underserved areas
400%
increase in providers
30%
decrease in application processing time
4 to 10
programs expanded
Prasad Bhalerao
Prasad Bhalerao
Public Sector Lead, North America

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