In a healthcare setting, when the unit is full, and when it takes 12 hours or more for a room to be clean and ready for the next patient. In an emergency room , as one nurse prepares to go off shift, and the head nurse ask her, could you remind a housekeeping that room 4 still need to be cleaned while you are passing by them?. It’s not a problem to remind housekeeping to come up, but the problem is these small adjustments are sometimes forgotten, in due time the regular hospital schedule will bring the right people to clean the room. That impact of the slower progress is felt throughout the organization that leads to lower job satisfaction, and potentially lower quality of care.
Health IT promises many benefits for improving efficiency and quality. Health IT systems often assume a workflow structure in the way their steps are organized. Organizations that studied workflow design are more likely to be successful in adapting to health IT. Healthcare industry depends heavily on good and valuable information. These valuable information can be lost when poor workflows impede communication and coordination or increase interruptions. Characteristics of a poorly functioning work process include unnecessary pauses, delays, and rework. Health organizations adapt workflows to suit the evolving environment. Over time, organizational workflows may show that some processes are no longer necessary, or can be updated and optimized.
Workflows are the set of tasks, grouped chronologically into processes, and the set of people or resources needed for those tasks, which are important to accomplish a given goal.
Efficiency in the workflow can be improved by carrying out processes in parallel, rather than improving the efficiency of existing steps. Workflow processes are mapped that direct the care team how to accomplish a goal. A good workflow will help accomplish those goals promptly; leading to care that is delivered in a safe manner, more consistently, reliably, and in compliance with standards of practice.