Discussion: Streamline Business Practices

Discussion: Streamline Business Practices

NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT:Discussion: Streamline Business Practices

Healthcare organizations need to consider how other industries have analyzed and addressed workflow to streamline business practices and improve quality outputs to glean best practices that might be incorporated into the healthcare industry’s own clinical and business approaches. First, however, each healthcare organization must step outside itself and recognize that not all aspects of patient care are unique; consequently, many aspects of care can be subjected to standardization. Many models of workflow redesign from manufacturing and the service sector can be extrapolated to health care. The healthcare industry is facing difficult economic times and can benefit from performance improvement strategies used in other industries.

Although workflow analysis principles have been described within the context of acute and ambulatory care in this chapter, the need to perform process analysis on a macro level will expand as more organizations move forward with health information exchanges and  medical home models . A  health information exchange (HIE)  requires the nursing informaticist to visualize how patients move through the entire continuum of care and not just a specific patient care area.

Technology initiatives will become increasingly complex in the future. In turn, nursing informaticists will need greater preparation in the area of process analysis and improvement techniques to meet the growing challenges that technology brings and the operational performance demands of fiscally impaired healthcare organizations.

Summary

Meaningful use (MU) reflected the rules and regulations arising from ARRA. MACRA has changed the game and how payment will be determined. EHR adoptions “represent a small step rather than a giant leap forward” ( Murphy, 2013 , para. 1). Workflows integrating technology provide the healthcare professional with the data necessary to make informed decisions. This quality data must be collected and captured to meet MACRA measures. Nurses must be involved in “meaningful data collection and reporting. Documentation by nurses can tell what’s going on with the patient beyond physical exams, test results, and procedures” ( Daley, 2013 , para. 5).