Olivier Rochat, Director of the CEESV
info@ceesv.ch
The black box of invoice management between care providers and insurances
La Centrale d’Encaissement des Etablissements Sanitaires Vaudois (commonly known as la CEESV or in English the Central Collection of Health Establishments in Vaud) is a non-profit entity that deals with the management of invoices between care providers and health insurances for patients in the canton of Vaud.
Invoices issued by care providers are sent to the CEESV, so that they can collect payments from the corresponding paying entities such as insurers, the state or the patients directly. This system was set up in 1960 in order to control the health expenditures of the state and to ensure that establishments maintained healthy cash flows.
About 8 years ago, the CEESV called upon OWT’s expertise to develop a custom-made platform that collaborators could use in their operational activities. OWT has been, ever since, responsible for the platform’s development, evolution and maintenance. As of today, the web application manages over 250'000 invoices per year, for total amounts close to 1 billion Swiss francs. Nevertheless, stakeholders communicate with the CEESV with limited visibility on the status of invoices, payments and other requests.
A portal to facilitate the care providers’ administrative work
To simplify the exchange of information and documents, the conception of a portal was proposed. Centralising channels of communication would have many benefits for all involved parties:
- Reduction in errors and response times.
- Higher transparency as involved parties can view the status of issued invoices and payments.
- Better data privacy management as confidential information is handled through a secure channel of communication.
Linking two worlds
Essentially, the portal bridges the gap between the CEESV, the care providers and the insurers. Each side manages invoices differently, so the main challenge was to come up with a solution that benefitted everyone.
Following our user-centric Blueprint methodology, various series of interviews with potential users were conducted at every stage of the project. By continuously involving stakeholders in each iteration, we made sure that the solution was in line with user requirements, as well as fitting architectural constraints.
After 5 weeks of analysis, we delivered a clear representation of the future portal through a clickable prototype, the corresponding backlog of specifications and a comprehensive roadmap with software development effort estimation to successfully implement the solution.
