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Title:
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AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO STANDARDIZED AND AUTOMATED EXTRACTION OF CLINICAL PROCESS CYCLE TIMES |
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Author(s):
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Eva Gattnar, Okan Ekinci, Vesselin Detschew |
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ISBN:
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978-972-8939-49-6 |
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Editors:
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Mário Macedo |
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Year:
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2011 |
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Edition:
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Single |
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Keywords:
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Process modeling, process cycle time, process monitoring, key performance indicators, timestamps |
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Type:
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Full Paper |
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First Page:
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128 |
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Last Page:
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136 |
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Language:
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English |
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Cover:
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Full Contents:
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click to dowload 
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Paper Abstract:
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Optimization of clinical pathways is one of the key elements of quality improvement initiatives in hospitals. The management of time-critical diseases such as heart attack and stroke although highly standardized can be more or less time-consuming depending on the workflow bottlenecks in a particular hospital. To identify bottlenecks in a process that overall can be accomplished within one or two hours, requires a thorough understanding of both workflow and durations each of the sub-processes take. Having in mind the interoperability issues in hospitals, the division- and system-crossing collection of process cycle times is still a challenge. An aggravating factor is the lack of a detailed patient-oriented view that follows the complete treatment process rather than just a few key procedures. Furthermore, along this path, healthcare IT solutions do not allow a continuous collection of timestamps. Our investigation focuses on a novel way of acquisition and communication of timing information along the clinical pathway of time-critical diseases in the context of various clinical standards (e.g. DICOM, HL7 etc.) and systems (e.g. hospital information system, radiology information system, imaging modalities, lab information system etc.). Beside the consideration of clinical standards and systems, this paper presents that the documentation of timestamps along a pathway represents a promising opportunity to follow and potentially guide patient flow over several departmental and system borders. We propose a generic model based on Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) that consists of 21 modules that are connected to each other with process interfaces. The missing link between clinical systems and the patient process is drawn by embedding selected IT-timestamps into this newly developed clinical process model and assigning them to the appropriate events in the model. In this paper, the assignment of timestamps is described based on the example of the dedicated modality sub-process defined in the developed clinical model. The presented technical and process-oriented view will provide the basis for an automated and standardized acquisition of process cycle times. This will allow hospitals to analyze clinical processes in greater detail than ever before, to determine new quality indicators and to further optimize processes by eliminating bottlenecks. In time-critical diseases this typically directly translates into an improved outcome for patients. |
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