The Health Industry is far From Process-Minded to Help the Sick

I have been sick yesterday and today with the flu.  Without sounding like I am making a formal request for Get Well cards (smile), like all other circles in my life, the concept of "process" has entered my mind numerous times in dealing with doctors and pharmacies.  The fact that the Health Industry, or the industry in my part of the world, is so far removed from efficient process-centric operation is mind boggling.  I do have to think I am not living in a special part of the world, as I have read the following article today.

So my trials and tribulations of my doctor and pharmacy visits included the following:

• Not being able to make a doctor's appointment (I have to call in, be put on hold, talk to a receptionist, tell her my records are in their files, and wait for confirmation)
• Once getting to the doctor, having to show them my insurance card (despite it being on file) where the check in attendant once again makes a photocopy of it
• Once I am checked in, I see that they write my name on a DRY ERASE BOARD (the queue of patients to be seen). Can you believe this? What happens if someone inadvertently brushes against the board?
• After seeing the doctor and getting a prescription, I have to drive to the drug store and hand the prescription paper to the pharmacist
• It turns out, there is some problem with the prescription, my insurance, and the doctor who filed it. I am told to go home while they make phone calls to sort out the mess. And believe you me, this is a mess!

As you can see, this "process" is riddled with inefficiencies that could be streamlined with today's technologies:

• Why shouldn't I be able to make an appointment online if I am already a known patient?
• Why aren't my medical records online and accessible to prove my insurance is current and valid?
• Why do I have to take a piece of paper (prescription) and drive it to a pharmacy?
• Why can't the prescription be automatically filed at the pharmacy, so that when I get there, it stands a good chance of already being ready?

As I sat waiting at numerous stages of getting my medicine back home with me, it is all I could do but laugh on how BPM is a no-brainer for the Health Industry for reasons such as:

• Moving from paper documents (and whiteboards, too!) to electronic records
• Integrating the disparate electronic applications, and the data in the applications, into a single fluid process
• Giving patients and customers web-based access to proactively understand appointment schedules, doctor delays, and anticipated prescription fill times

I could be a tad cantankerous and frustrated (many sick people are), but when people are going to see doctors and pharmacies, there is obvious an immediate need for action by them.  Having to deal with paper, offline processes, people and systems not connected to one another, and overall inefficiencies, it is hard to argue that the entire system is not much more than a house of cards.

 

Relevant Links:

BPM and the Transition to EMRs: Ensuring Quality

Making the Most of Technology in Healthcare

BPM, the "Glue" Connecting Disparate Systems

 

Chris Adams
VP Product and Technology
Ultimus

 

BPM and the Transition to EMRs: Ensuring Quality

There are many best practices to consider when implementing a BPMS or any other major system; however, the ultimate goal in any BPM project is to retain and improve the quality and integrity of the process, especially when it comes to healthcare.

Hospitals are giant system networks, and depending on their size, they can consist of several thousand desktop computers and hundreds of integration points.  This being said, there is no room for error in transitioning between systems and processes. As healthcare providers rely on various applications to carry out their daily tasks and deliver correct and effective treatment, it is imperative that the transition between systems, applications, and processes is as seamless as possible. When it comes to someone's life lacking in quality of care is not an option. This is where BPM (Business Process Management) adds value. 

BPM Software has the ability to ensure process quality and integrity is maintained in the transition and operation of various systems, through four key steps:

1. Model- mapping out your processes in preparation for automation and to determine process cost and time
2. Automate- evolving your process from a manual process to an electronic process where applications are seamlessly integrated and data is collected and stored electronically so it can easily be accessed and transferred to/from various applications
3. Manage- gain insight into your processes, the data in those processes, and the effectiveness of the process participants through advanced tracking and reporting capabilities
4. Optimize- ability to analyze and control your processes to make them more efficient and economical

In implementing a BPMS to facilitate systems integration and the transition from manual, paper-based processes and records to Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), modeling and automation play a significant role. Process modeling and automation allow you to do more than just map out your day to day processes; they allow you to test your automated process in a virtual environment to discover process bottlenecks and potential areas of systems disconnect. Testing the reliability of your processes in a virtual environment is crucial as it helps ensure quality and accuracy in its execution. Moreover, in preparing your transition to EMRs, it is essential to allot the necessary time for process testing and revision. It's when system rollouts are rushed that quality is jeopardized and your hospital risks losing the interoperability between systems and applications.

 

Once tested and implemented, a BPM Suite works to coordinate information across systems, unify task lists, and integrating data across the various applications.  When you expand this integration outside of the Healthcare Provider's office to integrate with other Healthcare Providers, you can see how the networks and bridges can come together.

 

Relevant Links:

Getting Started With Your BPM Project

Healthcare Providers Cannot Afford To "Directly" Use BPM Systems, but...

Making the Most of Technology in Healthcare

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

Making the Most of Technology in Healthcare

In an industry that is continuously looking for ways to improve  quality of care,  patient satisfaction, and financial performance, there are a few key best practices to keep in mind when it comes to technology.  Often times hospitals, like other organizations, build up a multitude of systems that lack the ability to communicate and share information. By overcoming this complication through the connection of your systems with a Business Process Management Suite (BPMS), hospitals can improve their overall initiatives by:

• Being innovative and becoming a meaningful user as mandated under American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. ARRA is offering hospitals and healthcare organizations financial incentives to become "meaningful users" of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology. This means that they must: (1) demonstrate use of certified EHR technology in a meaningful manner; (2) demonstrate that the EHR technology provides for the electronic exchange of health information to other applications and systems and (3) provides information on clinical quality measures.
  
  
• Eliminating paper and becoming green. Unlike any other industry, healthcare is fundamentally document-based and always has been. At the core of the healthcare delivery system is the medical record. Rather than moving paper documents from one hospital to another, or between departments, or from a patient's home to a laboratory appointment, connecting technology systems via BPM software allows for an electronic transfer of information at a moment's notice. As a process improvement workflow platform, BPM allows you to capture and store documents in a repository, so that the patient record can flow seamlessly between processes and departments - from registration to clinical process to final billing - whether all under one roof or at several locations.
  
  
• Starting small, thinking big. Whether using process templates or building your own, begin connecting your technology systems one step at a time. With workflow technology, you can optimize one business process at a time, linking the technology systems across your hospital, and building from your successes. Using process template as a starting point, customize the process based on the unique rules of your hospital. Connect your technology systems to conform to your hospital's processes, not the other way around.
  
  
• Becoming operational and sustainable. Hospital processes do not operate in a silo - they move across different clinical and administrative departments, among numerous hospital personnel, and often between multiple healthcare providers. With the core of a hospital's infrastructure being the exchange of information between different point applications, systems integration is essential as it facilitates this and provides a healthier and more sustainable environment for day to day operations. The electronic exchange of information, as provided by a BPMS empowers healthcare providers with knowledge at the point of care, reduces duplication of effort, and, most importantly, increases patient safety by ensuring that all providers treating the patient know everything they need to know about the patient.
  
  
• Continuously reviewing and optimizing the process. Develop an enterprise-wide strategy to take a close look at each and every process in every department and uncover the pain points. Utilize workflow solutions to eliminate these pain points, process by process, each time bringing you closer to the enterprise vision and process optimization.

Depending on how well you use and integrate your technology systems, can either hurt you or help you. Connecting point applications to seamlessly share data and communicate with each other is a recipe for success and meaningful use.

Learn more about making the most of Technology in Healthcare, click here to view the following webcast.

 

Relevant Links:

Eliminate the black screen: Your Company's New Year's Resolution

Expanding Business Process Communications Outside Your Office 

The Challenge Ahead: Putting an End to Wasteful Spending in Healthcare

BPM, the "Glue" Connecting Disparate Systems

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

Expanding Business Process Communications Outside Your Office

In today's work environment, approximately 40% of your work force is working outside of the office at any point in time.  Modern day work environments include colleagues on business trips or those  who work in offsite locations. Moreover, in today's work environment, situational out-of-office situations, such as being sick or on vacation, do not obviate the necessity to communicate with your co-workers.  Despite not being located in your company headquarters, your colleagues are vital parts to your day-to-day operations.  Effective business process execution in your company requires intra-office and inter-office communication.

Mobile technologies have served as the "glue" to bring together company colleagues no matter where they are.  In addition to new employees being issues laptops and desks, standard roll-on practices often include the issuing of mobile phones, PDAs, or beepers / pagers.  Mobile technologies allow colleagues to communicate through voice, emails, texts, and alerts no matter where they are.

Integrating mobile technologies into the execution of your business processes is important for numerous reasons:

• It is inefficient for your process participants to manually recreate emails and redial colleagues through phone calls and/or pages.
• History of process communications is a valuable part of the process audit trail. Having a BPM Suite record when process alerts were sent and to whom they were sent becomes part of the process audit trail.
• Interfacing with processes is not always performed through "fat" client interfaces. Mobile devices allow process participants quick and simple web based interfaces allow critical processes to be expedited forward.

Despite the current buzz in the BPM space with social technology integration (such as FaceBook, Twitter, etc), some business industries are still very much reliant on older, established communications.  For example, hospital staff workers often carry pagers to receive alerts to clean patient care rooms.  Having such capabilities allows for quicker bed turnover, increased productivity, and less waste (view webcast on this subject). Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite business processes provide business participants numerous choices for interaction with their process tasks:

• Alerts through Social Technology sites
• Emails
• Web based forms
• Text Messages
• Alerts to pagers and beepers
• Voice based messages

Flexible and numerous process communication options are essential to ensure process participants can always remain part of your day-to-day operations.  If your process participants are isolated or abandoned from your critical business processes, then you run the risk of those critical processes becoming bottle-necked and stalled.  Are you leveraging numerous communication options in your processes today?  Are your process participants reliant on emails to get process updates?

 

Relevant Links:

Business Processes: Recognizing You Need Business Process Improvements

Visibility Into Your Processes Helps You Control Your Costs

Rethink The Ways You Update Your Process Participants

Ultimus Enhances BPM Suite with Twitter Updates for Your Business Process

 

Chris Adams
VP of Product Development and Technology
Ultimus

The Challenge Ahead: Putting an End to Wasteful Healthcare Spending

As healthcare reform discussions progress, so does the visibility into the amount of money that is being wasted in healthcare each year. A recent report on the U.S. Healthcare System suggests that $505 to $850 billion is wasted annually on preventable mishaps and inefficiencies.  The chart below highlights common money pitfalls in the healthcare industry.

Many of the pitfall areas noted above involve process rework and redundant activities that can easily be avoided with the implementation of a quality process automation system.  With process automation or Business Process Management (BPM) software, healthcare providers have the ability to model, automate, manage, and optimize key processes to eliminate inefficiencies and increase visibility.

As you can see from the chart, 37% of wasteful spending is on unnecessary testing and overuse of antibiotics. This refers to tests that are performed multiple times to avoid malpractice, negligence of testing, and error prone reporting. Using BPM to automate testing and reporting procedures, healthcare providers are able to eliminate the need for unnecessary, repeated testing, and overuse of antibiotics. With standardized forms that capture data electronically and can auto-populate other pertinent medical forms and records, negligence is greatly reduced. From the point that the data is captured throughout the rest of the process (and ultimately patient's history) the results are documented as well as the treatments and dosages prescribed.

Taking electronic forms and reporting to another level, CIO Magazine reported one hospital that has already implemented BPM has seen a significant improvement in reducing the workloads of nurses. Automating such processes as patient evaluation, medical record documentation and clinician notification has allowed nurses to eliminate the need to "manually send 354,000 text pages to the in-house beeper system and 160,000 text-to-speech telephone calls" (Chester County Hospital) allowing them to spend more time on the quality of care they provide to patients.

With growing demands of high quality, operational excellence, and reduced healthcare costs, what is your hospital doing to improve efficiency?  Have you considered BPM Software as a solution?

 

Relevant Links:

Hospitals: Attempting to Save $155 Billion

Lean Healthcare?

Getting Back to What's Important

Healthcare Providers Cannot Afford To "Directly" Use BPM Systems, but...

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

Patient Care & Safety: The Importance of Standard Procedures

In the realm of healthcare having well defined, clear, controlled, and consistent processes can mean the difference between success and failure. I was at the Hospital Accreditation Update Event yesterday, hosted by the Joint Commission, and the speaker was emphasizing the importance of having two unique identifiers per patient and the standard procedures for operation. He gave an example of two patients who were nearly identical.  They had the same name, birthday, age, and ethnicity. Moreover, the patients were seeing the same doctor for the same problem. As the patients were older, both qualified for Medicare- and even the Medicare Account numbers were only different by one digit.  The one major difference between the two patients is that one was at high risk for complete vision loss with the specific surgery and the other was not.  To make a long story short, the wrong patient was operated on and left completely blind.

Because the particular hospital did not have the correct check marks in place to ensure that two unique identifiers were being used consistently throughout a defined, well structured operation approval process, the end result was a costly failure. Had the said hospital implemented a process automation solution, various approval check marks would have arisen as alerts and notifications to process participants and medical staff. Moreover, having the patients entered into the process automation system by their unique identifiers would have maintained identifier consistency throughout the process, ultimately ensuring that the right patient (without high risk) received the right treatment and surgery.

This is just one example of where process automation and improvement software can play a key role in patient safety. Other examples include:

• Recording and tracking patient allergens to ensure the proper prescriptions are given
• Alerts and notifications to remind medical staff to dispense patient medication at the correct time
• Patient scheduling and follow up visits to ensure timely treatment and monitor progress
• Patient reassessment alerts to medical staff to ensure the patients are being monitored and reevaluated for the treatment they've received and their overall status

When you are dealing with someone's life and operations that will forever change that patient and his/her family, precision and quality of care are of the utmost importance. Considering how many patients hospitals treat annually and how many people come in with similar problems and backgrounds, is your hospital doing all it can to provide the highest quality of patient care and safety?

 

Relevant links:

Hospitals: Attempting to Save $155 Billion

Business Processes: Recognizing You Need Business Process Improvements

Lean Healthcare?

Getting Back to What's Important

Healthcare Providers Cannot Afford To "Directly" Use BPM Systems, but...

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

Security in BPM Suites Can Remedy Security Breaches

Recently a co-worker mentioned that a family member's medical records may have been breached and that there is a possibility that some of his records were too. This got me to think more about the security around all of the systems that contain our most personal information. Ultimately, I find this as just another force behind the push for Electronic Health Records (EHRs).

As it stands today many doctors' offices have a room full of shelves that are buried under files and files of medical records. Note that this room of files is frequently left open to be accessed by nurses and physicians assistants prepping patients. Sometimes, at small clinics and private doctor's offices, it is even open for the public to see. And as many of us have multiple doctors and specialist, security breaches exists when paper based medical files are literally mailed and shipped from office to office. This lack of security puts anyone who has ever been seen or treated at that facility at risk. This is where EHRs could play a major role.

Implementing a BPM system to facilitate your EHR project can equip your organization with greater control and visibility than you think. First, BPM can streamline the process of electronically capturing and organizing the data contained in your client's medical records. Secondly, with all of the data and records being electronic, BPM allows you to set up rules and restrictions around the records. This is extremely beneficial to healthcare organizations in several ways:

• While BPM is not software security, it does have the ability to define a workflow, involving only pertinent parties at each step. From this, rules and authorizations can be applied to the process ensuring that only authorized personnel are able to complete necessary tasks.
• As a back end piece to the point above, BPM can be used to automate and ensure security clearance and the authorization approval process for nurses and physicians assistants
• It allows the process champion to name responsible individuals in the process
• Most importantly, based on login access, BPM can be used to track and report on who accessed the patient database, when it was accessed, who's records were opened, and updates or changes that were made.

Thus, combining and integrating EHR software with BPM ensures your organization is proactively protecting the confidential information of its patients at all times.  It also eliminates the need for an entire room full of paper files that potentially anyone could walk into. This being said and given all of the mandated healthcare reforms, how can your organization not afford a secure system for protecting and monitoring patient information?

 

Relevant Links:

Hospitals: Attempting to Save $155 Billion

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Enforces Stricter HIPAA Compliance Regulations

Process Optimization in Government and Healthcare

Mitigate Risk by Modeling Your Business Processes

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

More Than Going Lean... Going Green

Today, many organizations are incorporating "Lean Thinking" into their objectives in an effort to improve operational efficiency; making up a large portion of these organizations are healthcare providers and hospitals. New legislation and regulations in the healthcare industry call for reduced wasteful spending and the use of Electronic Health Records to streamline information and facilitate patient treatment. What many organizations are coming to realize is that their efforts to go Lean are also helping them to go Green.

Both, Lean and Green thinking involve a company-wide commitment to change and make more sensible decisions about the way the company operates and how money is spent. Lean Thinking focuses on:

• Achieving the highest operational efficiency possible
• Reducing wastes
• Cutting costs
• Increasing productivity
• Improving cycle time

Green thinking, takes a slightly different approach, emphasizing:

• Paperless, efficient processes
• Making eco-friendly decisions
• Implementing a virtual work environment

Both methodologies, while different in nature, can be facilitated by implementing a Business Process Management Suite (BPMS).  BPM Software advances Lean and Green initiatives by automating paper-based forms and making them available electronically. Additionally, electronic forms capture patient information and updates automatically, eliminating the need for manual data entry, and thereby saving process participants time while reducing human errors that would otherwise have to be corrected. With process modeling, organizations then have the ability to map and automate out their day-to-day business processes to identify and eliminate bottlenecks and pitfalls to improve the organizations overall operational efficiency.

Is your organization exploring "Lean Thinking"? Does your organization want to go Green? If so, have you looked in to BPM?

 

Relevant Links:

Lean Healthcare?

Controlling Process "Rework" with Lean Six Sigma Practices

Visibility Into Your Processes Helps You Control Your Costs

Are You Green?

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

Hospitals: Attempting to Save $155 Billion

With all of the controversy and criticism spanning the networks and filling the newspapers, one thing is certain: It's time for healthcare to go Lean.

As outlined by President Obama's Healthcare Reform plan, the 5,700 hospitals that operate in the United States must cut an average of $2.6 million annually over the next 10 years. An overwhelming task to say the least, but for an industry that is flooded with inefficiencies, it is a revolution that would benefit all parties involved. Many people fear change and reform; however, many hospital executives are welcoming the demands to meet lean standards of operation, confident that it will bring about improved patient care and reduced costs.

Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Illinois, for example, was considering an $80 million maternity ward expansion project; however upon the implementation of Lean principles the hospital discovered that signing discharge papers was the bottleneck in the process, keeping patients waiting for hours to be approved to go home. Not only is this costly to the patient (as some would spend an extra day), but it is also costly to the hospital in terms of available beds and the ability to accept and treat new patients. Delnor was able to side-step the expansion project by simply hiring an additional nurse and designating her to handle discharge papers. Nonetheless, it makes you wonder- where else in daily operations are hospitals (and, in effect, patients) wasting money?

Other hospitals have been accused of wasting $10+ billion in unused medical supplies due to over- ordering items and letting them expire. Simpler Consulting CEO, Marc Hafer, in an interview with USA Today, estimated that "90% of the time and cost in hospital care is wasted and $19 billion could be saved each year if all hospitals were to get serious" about reform.  For hospitals this means:

• implementing just-in-time inventory purchasing
• following lean principles and business disciplines
• eliminating unnecessary steps, tests, and procedures

This is where Business Process Management (BPM) Software makes sense. BPM Software is a solution for hospitals looking to reduce costs and achieve operational efficiency. Using a full circle approach, BPM allows you to improve your organization's operations by: Modeling, Automating, Managing, and Optimizing your business processes.

Through this 4 step approach, MAMO (Model, Automate, Manage, and Optimize), your organization has the ability to:

• Map out your current business process to identify bottlenecks and workflow inefficiencies
• Test your process in a virtual environment simulation to ensure efficiency prior to automation
• Automate your workflow including electronic forms, email notifications, and process alerts
• Manage the process and usual events, patients scheduling, industry changes, etc.
• Continuously optimize and refine the process to ensure your organization is always operating at Lean levels of operation.

Moreover, BPM Software is more than just a process improvement tool; it is a platform upon which to support, run, and integrate your existing software applications into a single, easy-to-use interface. This being said, is your healthcare organization prepared to meet the changes being demanded? Is your hospital throwing away millions of dollars on wasted medical supplies and process bottlenecks?  Has your healthcare organization looked into Business Process Management Software?

 

Related Posts:

Getting Started with Process Management

Business Processes: Recognizing You Need Process Improvements

Lean Healthcare?

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus

Lean Healthcare?

When people talk about "lean" they commonly think about Lean Six Sigma used in the manufacturing industry, a methodology that has been used for decades to reduce costs, increase effectiveness, and improve production and operational efficiencies; however, the success of "lean" principles has caused nearly every vertical and role to take a look at "being lean".  The big buzz with lean methodology today is in the realm of healthcare. While healthcare and manufacturing are two very different industries, the basic ideas are quite similar. Whether producing and assembling machinery or treating patients, employees participate in and depend on many multifaceted processes to complete their tasks.

Lean thinking and operations focus on eliminating waste out of daily processes to increase the value of completed work.  Waste, in this case can be defined as anything that decreases value, whether it's time, money,  or resources. Lean thinking is also customer centric in that it serves to maximize value to customers on all levels.

In achieving lean operations, an organization must first determine the value-adding and non-value adding steps in the process - a task that can easily be done with a simple business process modeling tool. Lean methodology ultimately is designed to improve the quality of process outputs by finding and removing the causes of errors and inconsistency within your business processes. This allows businesses and organizations to:

• Ensure efficiency in their procedures
• Decrease cycle times
• Improve customer service
• Reduce costs

As it relates to healthcare, this means automating internal processes and forms to improve the quality of care provided to patients. Implementing a business process management solution allows providers to define, automate, and manage a process to ensure consistency and visibility. It also allows process champions to continuously optimize the workflow to ensure that the organization is operating at optimum levels of performance. Having electronic health records and other patient information updated and ready prior to treatment allows healthcare providers to deliver a higher quality of care to patients while also treating them in a timelier manner.  This could be a cost savings or value in that:

• Patients spend less time in the waiting room
• Electronic Health Records (EHRs) allow employees to quickly find and update information
• Required forms are already pulled and/or filled out
• Scheduling of patients is more efficient
• Patient overall satisfaction is increased

With all of the reform in the healthcare industry, there is no time or money for inefficiency or waste. Is your company currently practicing lean principles? What challenges do you see in implementing a lean solution?

To learn more about Lean thinking and Six Sigma, click here to download a whitepaper.

 

Mary Katherine Strupe
Marketing Coordinator
Ultimus