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Improving Business Operations Processes

CLIENT

Easterseals Northern California (ESNorCal)

Location

California

In the process of addressing operational issues, ECG enabled Easterseals Northern California (ESNorCal), then known as Easterseals Bay Area, to transform its process improvement methodology, helping solve its immediate problems and setting it up for future success.

ESNorCal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Northern California that has served children with developmental disabilities for over 90 years. ESNorCal is at the forefront of autism care and contracts with Kaiser Permanente to provide applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy.

The Challenge

To address the growing demand for ABA therapy resulting from insurance coverage expansion, ESNorCal established a network of therapy providers. However, even with the additional providers, ESNorCal struggled to offer therapy schedules that met its clients’ needs and its service level agreements with Kaiser. Staff were frustrated by the manual data entry required to document care, communication barriers, unclear roles and responsibilities, and complaints from clients, Kaiser, and network providers.

Our Solution

ESNorCal asked ECG to evaluate and improve its provider capacity management, client placement, and customer service. Using Lean Six Sigma principles, ECG’s performance optimization team quickly established and led two concurrent process improvement work streams.

The Capacity Management-Client Placement Work Stream

  • Mapped current-state workflows and defined operational requirements for client placement.
  • Developed standard operating procedures and management tools, determined staffing needs, and identified performance benchmarks for managing client placement.
  • Developed customized protocols the new centralized client placement team would follow to improve communications and place clients more efficiently.
  • Identified metrics and KPIs to measure future performance.

The Customer Service Work Stream

  • Mapped current-state workflows and defined operational requirements for client placement.
  • Defined functional requirements and productivity measurements to standardize and control processes.
  • Analyzed technology needs and developed implementation recommendations.
  • Evaluated the current staffing model and organizational structure to develop a future-state staffing model.
  • Developed standard operating procedures for major customer service activities.

Additionally, ECG introduced a standard methodology and toolkit for project management.

Our Results

As a result of ECG’s efforts, ESNorCal understood the state of the client placement process and was able to implement tactics to enhance controls and assign ownership of the process, increase the accuracy and usefulness of provider capacity information, and, ultimately, improve client placement capabilities. The new standard operating procedures enabled ESNorCal to identify, escalate, and address customer issues more consistently and efficiently. ECG’s accelerated process improvement approach empowered ESNorCal staff to transform how the organization serves its clients.

Related services

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Key Outcomes

Enhanced controls and assigned ownership of the process.

Increased the accuracy and usefulness of provider capacity data.

Empowered staff to better serve clients.

Meet the team

Katie Fellin

Partner

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