Inadequacy of Off-the-Shelf Business Process Management and Workflow Automation Systems for Patient Care

What is Business Process Automation (BPM) and Workflow Automation Technology?

Workflow automation is defined by the Workflow Management Coalition as the “computerized facilitation or automation of a business process, in whole or in part.” Workflow systems generally provide a capability for entering metadata describing the sequence of tasks or activities in a work process, the resources required to execute each task, and the data needed to manage the flow of activities and to execute each task. Workflow systems also generally include a component that manages the execution of individual workflow instances, such as a workflow to process a particular insurance claim for an auto accident. This component is variously known as a “workflow engine,” a “workflow automation server,” or a “workflow enactment service.”  This component tracks the status of each workflow instance, determines what task is needed next, determines what human or system resources to marshal to execute the task, and communicates with those resources to transport the needed data to and from the resources. In these systems, an instance of a workflow is generally initiated by completing a computer-based form that provides the data needed to get the workflow started. Workflow systems increase the efficiency of service delivery, since they are able to route the right task to the right person or machine at the right time. They increase the consistency and quality of service delivery, since they track work according to metadata that can define best practices. They also increase the reliability of services, since bottlenecks and errors can be identified and managed. Some workflow systems provide a generic framework that can be adapted to a wide variety of service-delivery processes.

Business Process Management (BPM) is a management approach and a category of information technologies that supports this management approach.  BPM includes the process-oriented management philosophy underlying Continuous Quality Improvement, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, and Lean Thinking.  It also refers to information technologies that combine workflow automation tools with additional capabilities related to simulation of business processes during the design process, specifying some aspects of the user interface offered to the end user, and capturing, analyzing and reporting process data.  The vision of BPM technology is to offer “process transparency” and to support a management approach which emphasizes the ability for leaders and front-line participants in production processes to meaningfully participate in the design, re-design, and data-driven continuous improvement of their own business processing, rather than relying on technology experts to do that work on their behalf.   More information on BPM is available here.

So, why can’t we just use off-the-shelf BPM technology for Patient Care?

Despite the great promise of workflow automation and BPM technology in health care, there are a number of shortcomings to the generic “off-the-shelf” workflow and BPM systems that limit their health care utility. First, generic workflow and BPM systems lack tight integration between the process of developing a care plan and the process of care delivery. The form-based initiation for workflow instances employed by existing workflow and BPM systems works adequately for simple service-delivery processes such as an insurance claim, but is inadequate to use for planning of complex health care services where patients have multiple problems and needs that can only be met with a tailored collection of services. For example, existing medical order entry systems can handle the entry of a single laboratory, or even a set of orders commonly used for a particular purpose. But they are not up to the task of managing the creation of an overall plan of care for a patient with multiple health problems, particularly those that are being addressed by an inter-disciplinary team of health care service providers. And even for simple laboratory orders, existing order entry systems do not manage the entire process of communicating the results to the right people, escalating the communications process if people are unavailable, initiating follow-up services, etc.

Another inadequacy is that off-the-shelf workflow and BPM systems require technical staff to write “scripts” (computer code) to create and edit workflow process specifications and to configure user interface elements. To a greater extent than in many other industries, the front line “workers” in health care are highly trained professionals with a strong sense of autonomy and a drive to innovate. Clinicians are attracted to evidence-based standards of care, but demand the ability to customize those standards to fit the local setting. Therefore, for workflow technology to work in health care, it must be supported by a prepared library of evidence-based workflow metadata, and by tools that facilitate the most common types of customizations directly by clinical staff.

Finally, patients often have difficulty understanding their care plans and clinicians do not always have time to explain. Although some workflow-based CRM systems produce printed sales proposals with embedded explanatory material, this is not available in health care-focused system that solves the other problems described above.

In health care and some other service industries, it is a legal requirement that service providers formally document the services that they provide, as well as their plans for delivering services in the future. Documentation of services provided is also a requirement for fee-for-service billing. Creating service plans and documenting services provided for legal or billing purposes represents a duplication of work. Although there are systems designed to assist in the creation of medical chart notes, no existing system integrates this clinical document function into a flexible workflow automation system to eliminate this duplication.

Existing face-to-face processes for gathering input from multi-disciplinary teams of service providers into service plans is prohibitively expensive and logistically difficult for busy teams. For example, in the health care field, “tumor boards” and “inter-disciplinary clinics” are used to provide a mechanism for users in different disciplines and specialties to provide input and collaborate in the development of a plan of care for a patient. But the great expense of these meetings relegates this practice to only the most serious and academically interesting cases within advanced medical centers. Systems are not available to incorporate inter-disciplinary input into the development of a care plan that can be used for automatic initiation of workflows to manage execution of the plan.

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