Struggling with inefficient healthcare processes?

Using health informatics to improve patient care, decreases errors, and streamline processes. To increase productivity, accuracy, and decision-making, put automated systems, data analytics, and electronic health records into practice. Align resources optimally and guarantee adherence to improve the quality of healthcare service.

In determining the need, consider the parties affected. Patients, healthcare staff, supply team, management, etc. Know how the inefficiency affects them. Review the entire process map and see which points in the pathway affect the area of inefficiency.

Streamline inefficient healthcare processes by identifying bottlenecks, involving frontline staff in process improvement, leveraging technology for automation, standardizing workflows, and continuously monitoring and optimizing performance.

The only way to assess and improve deficiencies in outdated and unreliable healthcare processes is to utilise your staff’s knowledge and experience, in addition to their opinions regarding what requires improvement vs what requires replacement.

1) A first step in making an initial assessment is to sit with the person(s) who performs the task (process owner) and list, step-by-step, how the task is accomplished from beginning to end. I only review the written SOP (if it exists) for reference as I always encounter differences (100% of the time) between written manuals and reality. 2) Review each task and evaluate whether it adds value and how long each task takes—this is the way to accurately identify a bottleneck. 3) Tasks that do not add value need to be reviewed for potential removal from the process, and tasks that take the longest will create a bottleneck. 4) The longest tasks need to be evaluated to be shortened or add more resources to divide the workload.

- Successful process mapping requires active participation and buy-in from all relevant stakeholders, including clinicians, administrative staff, and IT personnel. Failure to engage these key individuals can result in an incomplete or inaccurate representation of the actual workflows, undermining the value of the exercise. - While visual process maps are valuable, they should be complemented by a data-driven approach. Quantitative metrics, such as cycle times, error rates, and resource utilization, can provide deeper insights into the root causes of inefficiencies. Combining the visual and data-driven perspectives can lead to more informed and impactful process improvements.

I have found that when dissecting a process if you ask "why do you do that"? Often the answer is "This is how we've always done it!" One of my favorite excercises with teams is Zero Based Process Mapping. It creates a space to think about what your trying to accomplish, about what could be, not just what is. This opens up opportunity to think differently, to gather everyone's wild and crazy ideas that often lead to insights that you didn't even know you needed.

Process mapping is the ABC on process improvement. There is no way a process can be improved if other can’t be mapped. We learned this the hard way in healthcare. Understanding the process flow is the first step needed to improve a process. Sometimes it will take much time to realize the power of mapping. It is the first step to be able to find the root causes of your problem and avoid to implement short term cosmetic improvements hard to maintain over time.

Mapear, documentar, graficar y entender los procesos es un aspecto fundamental para lograr la calidad del servicio/producto esperado. La participación activa de los colaboradores que interactúan con cada uno de sus pasos es fundamental, ya que al ser quienes están en campo son quienes conocen la operatividad y los factores que inciden en el adecuado desempeño de los procesos, lo que a su vez les permite hacer propuestas de mejora al sentirse partícipes de las optimizaciones implementadas, fortaleciendo el compromiso.

para poder lograr un mapeo de procesos exitoso es necesario que todo el equipo este comprometido con la misma vision de trabajo. a fin de re evaluar constantemente la eficiencia de dichos procesos, por parte de todo el equipo. y ademas generar una devolucion contante hacia todos los integrantes.

Aligning technology, people, and process is a winning formula that allow your team members to work at the top of their license. When looking at technology solutions start with an assesment. In the RCM space we leverage RCMTAM RCM Technology Adoption model by HFMA, to evaluate the adoption of Mission Critical and High Value technologies across the revenue cycle and how the adoption of such technologies correlate to financial performance. This creates a roadmap for success helping organizations prioritize solutions that create the highest impact.

Tech integration is very important and facilitates much of the work needed to optimize care. However, the lack of tech is not a limitation to do the right thing for the patient or for managing the hospital. The key is to have sound processes. If you have no proceses there is no tech integration that will help with your inefficiencies. On the other hand, having sound paper based processes is a supercharge for tech integration. Don’t look for tech to solve all the problems. Think in terms of processes, implement them and then think on how tech can optimize them.

Dictation technology (like Dragon Medical One, for example) offers comprehensive clinical documentation assisted by AI to create a patient chart and history faster. Providers report that this is one of the most time-consuming tasks. Any technology will have its downsides. Always request a pilot test to ensure it saves time and improves accuracy cost-effectively, or the solution can easily become a bigger problem.

I negotiate with technology vendors for the training part. How much, for how many seats, and for how long will they offer training? They usually provide available videos or Zoom sessions, but sometimes the new tech requires customization, and it involves critical tasks that we cannot screw up. It costs more, but on-site, one-on-one training is worth the investment in these cases.

Having an executive dashboard with 6-10 KPIs readily available is reasonable for health managers to keep track of their daily operations without taking too much time to monitor. Each KPI in this dashboard needs to be the ultimate effect of multiple tasks required to accomplish the goal. For example, you have "collections" as one of the KPIs, which refers to the payments received. This KPI results from completing the medical records, properly coding and creating the claim (or invoice), submitting the claim, getting approval, and receiving the payment. If you see a decline or an abnormal amount in this KPI, you need to be able to track all the activities mentioned to find the root problem and correct it.

Ter fluxos organizados, mapeados e entendidos plenamente pela sua equipe garante a consistência na tomada de decisão, uma jornada de trabalho mais saudável e, no caso dos hospitais, uma qualidade assistencial superior. O mapeamento de processos hospitalares, nesse sentido, surge como uma maneira de melhorar o cuidado, otimizando a experiência do paciente e fazendo com que ele tenha mais segurança no ambiente hospitalar, já que tem sua jornada compreendida de ponta a ponta. Além das vantagens assistenciais, o mapeamento garante à gestão uma base para tomar decisões complexas, melhora indicadores que impactarão na sustentabilidade financeira, reduz a judicialização e otimiza a utilização de recursos.

Any technology or process for that matter, needs to be regularly assessed for effectiveness. Is the tool actually saving your teams time? Is more training needed to have your organization fully implement the tools therefore getting full benefits of use? Choosing and measuring quantitative variables like time and cost savings is a great way to assess effectiveness.

En este contexto, ISO 7101:2023 Una norma internacional sobre SISTEMAS DE GESTIÓN DE LA CALIDAD EN SALUD , promueve un marco sólido para alcanzar estos procesos, recordemos que la mejora continua es un proceso, y es iterativo, es decir que se repite las veces que sean necesarias.

Healthcare is inefficient by design. Despite most care fits under standard procedures, there are a group of patients that need customized treatments which sometimes do not have a supportive standard administrative procedure. These complex cases account for much of the process redoing. These are the most complex cases which can’t be modeled by the standard Gaussian theory. Their incidence is much more than predicted by a normal distribution. That’s why we addressed these cases using specific tools, one of them the lean methodology. It works in many areas, but it’s not a one fits all recipe. It’s difficult to apply when direct medical patient care is involved. It works much better when trying to improve management process and patient flow.