In: Operations Management
Imagine you are the supervisor of the health information management (HIM) department in a large outpatient clinic. This department manages patient records. Complaints about your department are becoming more frequent and intense than in the past. Some clinic employees have complained that the HIM department takes too long to retrieve patient records. Others have expressed dismay over the rudeness of HIM staff. You decide to talk about these problems with employees throughout the clinic. The clinic's receptionists respond to you defensively. They tell you that the HIM staff won't answer the phone and they want some backup when they are busy with patients. You talk to the HIM staff and find their stories are just as negative. They say they are being charged with more responsibilities but have not additional help. They also complain that the receptionist's transfers calls that they should be handling. The clinic's nurses are also upset with the HIM staff; they claim the department does not help them locate patient charts, causing long wait times for patients. The clinic's physicians say they cannot assume the additional tasks to alleviate the situation because their days are already so chaotic.
5. What improvement tool would you use to define the current process for retrieving patient records?
6. You believe that cooperation between the clinic receptionists and HIM staff would improve if phone responsibilities were more clearly defined. To whom would you assign the tasks of defining roles and responsibilities?
7. After redesigning the record retrieval process, you want to monitor the effectiveness of your action. What improvement tool would you use to determine whether the number of complaints has decreased?
5. What improvement tool would you use to define the current process for retrieving patient records?
Top down flow map tool is the optimization method that can be used to describe existing procedure to access patient information. It is helpful because it demonstrates in the flowchart, each step in the process, the processing period in each stage of the process, the lagging time zones, the function to be redone, the repetitive steps and the stages where backtracking happens. Therefore, the flow map helps to better illustrate what is happening in the treatment phase in patient data, what procedures are being redundantly taken and which procedures should be prevented. We may detect the delays and suggest every phase in the process that causes the delays to change.
6. You believe that cooperation between the clinic receptionists and HIM staff would improve if phone responsibilities were more clearly defined. To whom would you assign the tasks of defining roles and responsibilities?
I was of the opinion that communication between clinic receptionist & HIM workers can be strengthened if telephone duty is specifically established. In that case for a specific issue I should describe the stakeholders. Of eg, front desk are the main enquiry stakeholders because that comes within their duties for the job. The nurses and physicians as well as other staff do have their own set of duties and obligations. A project manager or supervisor will be present and will know the partners and then specifically define the roles. Because the phone arrives at the receptionists first and if they understand the duties well then they will steer the phone call to the appropriate employees as well. A proper briefing on the duties and obligations of all employees, nurses, physicians, etc. must be provided here to the front desk people (receptionists).
7. After redesigning the record retrieval process, you want to monitor the effectiveness of your action. What improvement tool would you use to determine whether the number of complaints has decreased?
If the method of record retrieval is revamped its clear that we want to monitor the success of the actions we have undertaken. So the storyboard approach is to assess if the number of feedback has significantly limited the development approach that we will use here. The consistency storyboard tool is used to outline all key elements of the finished development plan that we are introducing. Then we report what the result was in the overview given for all the improvements we made, and all the suggestions we introduced.The effect reflects the real reports received during the enhancement. For this we can also document the number of grievances that had existed before a specific concept was introduced. So we know which part of the enhancement was successful, which parts gave little change and which parts require further changes in reality.
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