Introducing a process manager in healthcare: an experience report (original) (raw)
Related papers
Healthcare processes require the cooperation of different healthcare providers and medical disciplines. In such an environment, the quality and safety of care rely heavily on the ability to exchange information from one software to another, and from one person to another. However, information systems that support a seamless flow of information along healthcare processes are not broadly used in healthcare environments. Usually, healthcare organizations have their own autonomously developed information systems that do not support the cooperation of different organizational units and medical disciplines. This has led to the fragmentation of the patients’ information in proprietary heterogeneous systems across healthcare organizations. The aim of this paper is to: (1) explore how healthcare practitioners´ in Sweden experience information system support in their daily work activities, and (2) present and illustrate how key design principles of a process support system prototype can suppo...
Process Oriented Information Systems Architectures in Healthcare
Health Informatics Journal, 2003
An important insight in business management during recent years is the awareness that organisations need to focus on the processes that create value for their customers. This is in order to see to that value is created as efficiently as possible and that unnecessary or redundant activity is avoided. As a consequence, the organisations' IT support need to interact with business processes in a better way than is currently the case. Healthcare is by no means an exception, but also here there is a great need to concentrate on the processes for transparent communication between various actors and organisations, and between IT systems. Therefore, a new type of process oriented integration architectures has been developed by means of what may be referred to as process managers, which closely reflect the business processes. These are software devices that visualise the integration by means of graphical and easy to understand process models that also facilitate management and monitoring of the processes and their integration requirements. This paper discusses benefits and difficulties for healthcare of introducing an IS architecture based on process manager technology. The discussion is based on experiences from a project, in which a process manager is introduced to integrate IT systems over the patient process and involving several healthcare organisations. Results indicate that healthcare processes are indeed quite complex and involve much communication with various individuals and organisation. Particular problems are caused by communication across organisational borders due to e.g. security issues. However, process manager technology offers help in that it is able both to manage and monitor processes and to make communication with and between IT systems simpler and safer.
Healthcare Enterprise Process Development and Integration
Journal of Research and …, 2003
Healthcare enterprises involve complex processes that span diverse groups and organisations. These processes involve clinical and administrative tasks, large volumes of data, and large numbers of patients and personnel. The tasks can be performed either by humans or by automated systems. In the latter case, the tasks are supported by a variety of software applications and information systems which are very often heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed. The development of systems to manage and automate these processes has increasingly played an important role in improving the efficiency of healthcare enterprises.
Approaches to Hospital Process Management
Proceeding of the 2009 …, 2009
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) health care systems worldwide are faced with the challenge of responding to the needs of people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart failure and mental illness. Chronic disease management (CDM) is a systematic approach to improve health care for people with chronic disease. This paper studies two different approaches to the management of two of the various processes involved. In particular, we specify chronic disease management and purchasing processes both with Electronic Institutions and Metastorm.
Process management in healthcare. Sant Camil hospital case study.
Nowadays due to the crisis, some government measures are aimed at reducing healthcare spending, affecting in some level or another the quality offered. Process management is said to be a useful tool for reducing healthcare costs by improving management without any additional economic investment. That is doing more with the same resources and without reducing the quality offered. In this study an empirical case of a Catalan hospital is presented. Overall, the usefulness of process management in the healthcare sector is shown and some tips are provided for those managers that want to implement this management system in their hospitals. This work is also interesting for those managers responsible for the National Healthcare System due to a big question is stated: what would happen if process management was implemented in the whole healthcare system?
IT Support for the Medication Management Process in Hospitals
Medication management (MM) is a process used to ensure safe usage of medications, describing many tasks performed by groups of healthcare practitioners, including: processing large amounts of data, decision making; and coordination of involved professionals. The process poses risks for patient safety, many of which are serious. One way to enhance safety is by utilisation of IT to support various aspects of the process. However, despite the consensus about IT’s positive influence on the safety of healthcare process in general, and MM in particular, successful implementation of IT in healthcare remains challenged by many factors, including social factors. This paper outlines the MM process and illustrates some IT tools used to support tasks of the process. It further describes limitations and implementation challenges of these IT tools. Finally, the article discusses social challenges and some approaches to address them.
Healthcare Process Support: Achievements, Challenges, Current Research
2012
Healthcare organizations are facing the challenge of delivering high-quality services to their patients at affordable costs. To tackle this challenge, the Medical Informatics community targets at formalisms for developing decision-support systems (DSSs) based on clinical guidelines. At the same time, business process management (BPM) enables IT support for healthcare processes, e.g., based on workflow technology. By integrating aspects from these two fields, promising perspectives for achieving better healthcare process support arise. The perspectives and limitations of IT support for healthcare processes provided the focus of three Workshops on Process-oriented Information Systems (ProHealth). These were held in conjunction with the International Conference on Business Process Management in 2007-2009. The ProHealth workshops provided a forum wherein challenges, paradigms, and tools for optimized process support in healthcare were debated. Following the success of these workshops, this special issue on process support in healthcare provides extended papers by research groups who contributed multiple times to the ProHealth workshop series. These works address issues pertaining to healthcare process modeling, process-aware healthcare information system, workflow management in healthcare, IT support for guideline implementation and medical decision support, flexibility in healthcare processes, process interoperability in healthcare and healthcare standards, clinical semantics of healthcare processes, healthcare process patterns, best practices for designing healthcare processes, and healthcare process validation, verification, and evaluation.
The computer based patient record: a strategic issue in process innovation
Journal of Medical Systems, 1998
technology that has the potential to profoundly modify the work routines of the care unit. This study investigates a CPR project aimed at allowing physicians and nurses to work in a completely electronic environment. The focus of our analysis was the patient nursing care process. The rationale behind the introduction of this technology was based on its alleged capability to both enhance quality of care and control costs. This is done by better managing the flow of information within the organization and by introducing mechanisms such as the timeless and spaceless organization of the work place, de-localization, and automation of work processes. The present case study analyzed the implementation of a large CPR project ($45 million U.S.) conducted in four hospitals in joint venture with two computer firms. The computerized system had to be withdrawn because of boycotts from both the medical and nursing personnel. User-resistance was not the problem. Despite its failure, this project was a good opportunity to understand better the intricate complexity of introducing technology in professional work where the usefulness of information is short lived and where it is difficult to predetermine the relevancy of information. Profound misconceptions in achieving a tighter fit (synchronization) between care processes and information processes were the main problems.
IT support for medication management process in hospitals: An overview
2009
Medication management (MM) is a process used to ensure safe usage of medications, describing many tasks performed by groups of healthcare practitioners, including: processing large amounts of data, decision making; and coordination of involved professionals. The process poses risks for patient safety, many of which are serious. One way to enhance safety is by utilisation of IT to support various aspects of the process. However, despite the consensus about IT's positive influence on the safety of healthcare process in general, and MM in particular, successful implementation of IT in healthcare remains challenged by many factors, including social factors. This paper outlines the MM process and illustrates some IT tools used to support tasks of the process. It further describes limitations and implementation challenges of these IT tools. Finally, the article discusses social challenges and some approaches to address them.
A management information system model for process-oriented health care
Studies in health technology and informatics, 2004
To develop a conceptual model of a management information system for process-oriented health care organizations. Qualitative data was collected from two case studies in process-oriented health care settings. The first study addressed the information requirements of health care managers and the second study focused on organizational activities and clinical practice. From these data, preliminary models were iteratively developed, interpreted, and further revised. A county hospital in southern Sweden with 30 clinics and 3,200 employees. A conceptual model of a management information system for process-oriented health care organizations was developed in two parts: one part that describes the organizational interface of the model and the other part that describes the architecture of the model. A conceptual model has been developed for local-level integration of management information systems and organizational procedures in process-oriented health care organizations