"The healthcare gap is an urgent problem"
Strategy Execution at Accolade Zorg

2. What led to the breakthrough? In terms of content, change management, and/or project management?

After extensive consultation with all stakeholders, a new 18-page strategy was drawn up. It is a fairly detailed document, with all the major themes mapped out over the next five years. “Think of it as a list of all the major issues for the coming period,” Bosman explains. “We’ve incorporated the themes into a multi-year program with as concrete a plan as possible—including the priorities—so that the strategy doesn’t just exist on paper but will actually be implemented.”

The labor market is, of course, one of the key priorities in the strategy. How do you ensure that potential employees choose you over another employer? And how do you ensure that the people who already work for Accolade stay? One of the aspects that should help Accolade achieve this is its Christian identity, says Bosman. “We are an organization that provides healthcare from a Christian perspective. Of course, there are different ways to view this, but as far as we’re concerned, it’s a USP—a unique selling point. We are a Christian organization and want to remain so. This works both ways: it’s appealing to our clients, who feel at home with us, and it can also help us in the job market. But we do give that identity substance in a modern way. “Our Christian identity doesn’t come with a ‘brussels sprouts’ vibe.”

Another key focus of the new strategy is innovation. “In the near future, we will, by definition, have too few people to provide the same level of healthcare as we do now,” Bosman explains. “So we have no choice but to focus on innovation, both technologically and socially. For example, we’re working to integrate family caregivers and volunteers into our care process. Viewed from a distance, that sounds fairly straightforward: you ask one of the children to help with healthcare for their parents. But of course, that has an impact on our own employees, who have undergone years of training. They will certainly have an opinion about it. Then, of course, there’s the legal side: is this even allowed? How can you encourage informal caregivers to commit? After all, we’re not an employer. So we’ll have to transform the way we work.’

It’s also not easy to ask informal caregivers for help. “When residents end up in a nursing home, it’s often the result of an intensive process that came before. Those informal caregivers have sometimes been pouring all their energy into providing healthcare for years. Can you then immediately ask them to contribute? That’s really a dilemma.”

Turner’s role in this process was primarily to help make decisions. “As an organization, you simply have to deal with limitations,” says Bosman. “There are only 24 hours in a day, and you want to spend some of those hours sleeping. Accolade has both general activities and a number of niche areas. So the number of initiatives has to remain limited. That also helps get the organization on board. I need my employees to come up with ideas on how we can organize Healthcare differently; I can’t figure all that out from behind my desk or with just a few colleagues here in the hallway. It was about making choices, setting priorities, and then getting down to business. That doesn’t mean we’re just going to abandon our niche areas. We also have a responsibility. We provide geriatric psychiatry; we have an acquired brain injury (ABI) unit for people with acquired brain injuries, and a long-term intensive neurorehabilitation (LIN) unit. These are small target groups. Our LIN unit is one of only three specialized facilities in the entire Netherlands—we’re quite proud of that. But in terms of volume, it’s very small, though still important.”

The strategy has helped shape our thinking, says Bosman. “Up front, we had actually expected more radical choices. In some cases, we haven’t made those choices yet. Take home health care, for example. It’s an important service from a societal perspective, but we’re having trouble making it financially viable. We’ve implemented a few measures there that have helped us break even, so we don’t need to inject any additional funds.”