The document outlines a plan to standardize the patient portal inquiry process at Scripps Health. Currently, patient inquiries from multiple sources are handled individually by analysts with no consistent workflows or responses, resulting in long resolution times and duplicate work. The plan proposes to 1) divide analysts into specializations, 2) standardize workflows and responses to provide a uniform experience, and 3) leverage an existing reporting system to track metrics and assign inquiries to specific analysts. This will implement a ticket tracking system for all inquiries, regardless of source, to improve consistency, speed, and reporting.

1. Scripps Health A3
Title: Web Center Patient Portal Q2FY15 A3
Owner: Patient Portal Team
Exec Sponsor: Myra Salinas
Original State Date: Pre-December 2014
Revision Date: December 2014
1. Reason for Action/Opportunity. What is the basic need?
Currently, no standardized workflow exists for tracking and assisting/responding to patient
inquiries through the various ways in which we receive them. Because of this, we have no
method of gathering accurate metrics for reporting purposes.
6. Experiments/Action Plan/Ideas (bring to CVP or CNOE for consideration):
- Divide analysts into specializations.
- Standardize analysts’ workflows and responses to patient inquiries.
- Leverage existing reporting system to track metrics.
- Include functionality to assign tickets/cases to specific analysts.
2. Current State:
Patient inquiries arrive from a number of sources with no way to consolidate the flow of
inquiries as they arrive or to create and assign the different inquiries submitted to specific
analysts. Inquiries are dealt with on a case-by-case basis via individual workflows with little
standardization in the analyst’s responses, and with no way to fully track metrics associated
with them. The lack of workflow and response standardization results in longer wait times for
issue resolution and unnecessary, duplicative work for the analysts.
3. Problem Statement:
There is no standard workflow in place for the analysts to be able to answer patient inquiries
in a consistent and timely manner. Workflows differ for each analyst and resolution times
vary. Reporting and tracking are almost non-existent, leading to duplicative work being done.
4. Target State (include success statement and key success metric goal):
Implement a ticket tracking system that houses all tickets/issues reported regardless of the
source the issue originated from. Use standardized responses amongst all analysts to
ensure customers are receiving a uniform message in a timely manner. The tickets will be
assigned to individual analysts for beginning-to-end resolution. Create an automated process
for tracking the ticket type, in order to provide accurate metrics.
5. Gap Analysis/Open items (include What? Who? Where? When?):
- Individual workflows amongst analysts.
- Unstandardized responses used by analysts when resolving a customer issue.
- End user inquiries originate from multiple sources.
- Reporting: no system in place to run automated reports based on customer issue.
- Reporting: no system in place to house all customer issues in one place.
- No visible system in place to track which analyst is working on each customer issue.