Background
United Medicare is a recruitment agency specialising in the placement of doctors in all medical specialities to NHS and Private Hospitals and General Practitioners in primary care throughout the United Kingdom.
United Medicare wanted to scale up their operations and grow their business by taking on larger contracts. Their existing IT systems and architecture were limiting their growth. Their existing business processes were labour intensive and unreliable with Doctor registrations and new job requirements having to be entered manually or synchronised at the end of the day. Due to problems with their existing systems and developers United Medicare wanted a professional and established software supplier to manage the IT facilities and provide a high level of support.
The medical recruitment sector is highly competitive and any advantage would make a significant impact to their success and profitability.
The Challenge / Opportunity
To define and create scaleable core IT systems to support the organisation’s aggressive growth targets.
Our Thinking and Approach
Cohezia developed a scalable IT Strategy and Architecture for United Medicare as their existing core business application and database were not able to support the strategic growth plans. Scalability and speed were key success factors for the solution approach and design. We designed and developed a range of new web based recruitment applications covering all of the core business processes. The new applications needed to meet very strict guidelines defined for suppliers to the NHS.
The new system provides a range of facilities
- Web based (Extranet) functions to allow hospitals or other clients to enter details of requirements online so that United Medicare had immediate and accurate information on new requirements
- The client Extranet also allows hospitals to access their billing information and invoices online
- Online registration form for Doctors enabling them to enter their details from the United Medicare website and for this information to be immediately available to the recruitment team
- Advanced searching and candidate matching facilities to identify and contact suitable doctors
- Functions to improve the operational efficiency, such as automated letter and response templates
- A range of reporting functions to meet strict NHS requirements and guidelines
Technology Utilised
A review of the existing IT systems was carried out to ascertain the stability, upgradeability and technical integration of the systems. The new systems are browser based, on a Microsoft platform using MS SQL Server and .NET tools. The solution also includes an advanced Macromedia Flash application connected directly to the main MS SQL server database. A distance calculation tool was integrated to quickly identify suitable candidates within range of a job location.
Creative and Usability Design
The new applications needed to be easy to use and enable users to access and maintain a lot of information. A specially designed Flash based application was created to allow users to quickly and easily view and maintain the core doctor’s information. Being a core operational system, the design priorities were speed and simplicity.
Results
United Medicare now has secure, scalable and fast business critical systems which can support and accelerate their growth. The solution has allowed United Medicare to gain advantage over other agencies and allows them to meet strict NHS supplier guidelines leading to a potentially very significant increase in their revenue.