Process Improvement In Health Care

Process Improvement Analysis
The advent of patient satisfaction scores has transitioned the way healthcare providers are caring for patients. Healthcare is increasingly consumer driven, thus, providers must develop improvement processes to meet the needs of patient expectations (Bleustein, Rothschild, Valen, Valaitis, Schweitzer & Jones, 2014). Picker Institute (n.d.) developed eight principles that reflect the key values that should guide healthcare practices. As more attention was directed towards outpatient settings, Access to Care was the final principle added. This principle advises outpatient healthcare providers to acknowledge and develop strategies to meet patient expectations, which include ease of scheduling appointments, availability
Preregistration was created in an effort to decrease receptionist and billing office workload and patient waiting time on arrival to the clinic. If only 16% of the registrations are completed upon arrival, then patients will have longer wait times as receptionists are gathering demographics and billing offices are completing insurance authorizations. This incomplete registration process creates an escalating effect as nursing staff remains delayed all day and must perform service recovery with patients for the delays. Appointments are generally late and providers sense that patients are frustrated before the physician can begin care. Because staff are rushing through appointments, the billing office has identified that care is given that cannot be reimbursed due to incomplete records. In reviewing each stakeholders’ point of view, preregistration is one large problem that needs process improvement. The goal of this performance improvement project is to streamline the registration process in an effort to decrease wait times upon arrival to the clinic. Removal of wait times will have an inverse relationship with patient satisfaction, thus as wait time decrease, satisfaction scores should
These charts are useful for visualization of all activities and directions taken in the process. As seen in figure 1, registration begins with the primary care physician, patient or family member call to schedule an appointment. This process is complicated by length of duration before the appointment. If the appointment is within one month, then the receptionist collects the patient demographics and appointment date is shared with the caller and the caller is then advised to call a toll free number to preregister. When the patient arrives for the appointment, all registration is completed and the patient simply waits for the nurse to place in exam