Healthcare processes drive activities and outcomes across the health system, from emergency department admissions and procedures to billing and discharge. Furthermore, in the COVID-19 era’s uncertainty, process quality is an increasingly important driver in care delivery and organizational success. Given this broad scope of impact, process improvement is intrinsically linked to better outcomes and lower costs. Six strategies for healthcare process improvement illustrate the roles of strategy, skillsets, culture, and advanced analytics in healthcare’s continuing mission of transformation.

1. Healthcare Process Improvement:
Six Strategies for Organizationwide Transformation
Health Catalyst Editors

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Healthcare Process Improvement
Healthcare process improvement is one
of the essential drivers of a transform-
ation strategy that aims to improve the
quality of care while lowering costs.
Healthcare processes comprise
hospital admissions and discharge and
billing, emergency department (ED)
operations, patient transfers to different
facilities, medication administration,
patient flow, and more.

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
Six strategies to drive better care at lower cost through healthcare process
improvement demonstrate the impact of efficient, effective processes and the
vital role of a data– and analytics-based methodology and culture committed
to advancing care.
1. Transform the Delivery of Care in the Emergency Department
2. Adopt Six Lean Methodologies for Healthcare Improvement
3. Improve Hospital Patient Flow with Machine Learning
4. Prevent Medication Errors
5. Reduce Unwanted Variation in Healthcare
6. Prioritize Process Measures over Outcome Measures

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#1: Transform the Delivery of Care in the Emergency Department
Overcrowding in the emergency department
(ED) has been associated with increases in
inpatient mortality, length of stay, and costs
for admitted patients.
Emergency department wait times and patients
leaving without seeing a qualified medical
provider are indicators of overcrowding.

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#1: Transform the Delivery of Care in the Emergency Department
A data-driven approach addresses common
drivers of ED overcrowding and guides the
redesign or emergency care delivery:
 A four-step approach to redesigning
the delivery of emergency care
 Understanding ED performance
 Revising high-impact workflows
 Revising staffing patterns
 Setting leadership expectations
 Improving the patient experience

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#2: Adopt Six Lean Methodologies for Healthcare Improvement
By adopting lean principles, healthcare
organizations can reduce waste while
improving the quality of care.
This process improvement approach
involves applying stringent clinical data
measurement to routine care delivery,
allowing health systems to identify best
practice protocols and incorporate those
into the clinical workflow.

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#2: Adopt Six Lean Methodologies for Healthcare Improvement
When teams use data from these best practices
through a continuous-learning loop, they enable
protocol updates and improvement throughout
the organization—ultimately reducing waste,
lowering costs, and improving access to care.

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#3: Improve Hospital Patient Flow with Machine Learning
Health systems can leverage machine
learning and predictive models to improve
patient flow for different departments
throughout the organization.
Improving hospital patient flow results in
reduced patient wait times, reduced staff
overtime, improved patient outcomes, and
improved patient and clinician satisfaction.

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#3: Improve Hospital Patient Flow with Machine Learning
By focusing on three critical areas, health
systems can foster successful data science
that will lead to improved hospital patient flow:
 Build a data science team
 Create a machine learning pipeline
to aggregate all data sources
 Form a comprehensive leadership
team to govern data

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#4: Prevent Medication Errors
With a potential industrywide savings of almost
$21 billion and an impact on more than seven
million patient lives, preventing harmful
medication errors is a significant improvement
opportunity for health systems.
Approximately 50 percent of adverse drug events
(ADEs) are preventable, making their reduction a
highly impactable area of process improvement.
Current data and analytics workflow tools are
making ADE surveillance, monitoring, and
prevention increasingly more effective.

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#5: Reduce Unwanted Variation in Healthcare
In outcomes improvement in healthcare, variation
threatens quality across processes and outcomes.
Health systems can improve outcomes by
recognizing where and how inconsistency impacts
their outcomes and reduce unwanted variation.
There are three critical steps to reducing
unwanted variation:
Remove obstacles
to success on a
communitywide
level.
1
Maintain open
lines of communi-
cation and share
lessons learned.
2
Decrease the
magnitude of
variation.
3

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Six Strategies for Healthcare Process Improvement
that Drive Better Care at Lower Costs
#6: Prioritize Process Measures over Outcome Measures
The healthcare industry tends to prioritize
outcome measures, but outcome measures
alone won’t help organizations reach their goals
of better quality and reduced costs.
Instead, health systems must get more granular
with their data by tracking process measures.
Process measures make it possible to identify
the root cause of a health system’s failures.
They’re the checklists for systematically
guaranteeing the organization will deliver the
right care to every patient, every time.

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Improved Processes Mean Improved Care
Process improvement is an ongoing priority
for healthcare leadership as the driver of all
health system activities and outcomes.
While the industry continues to navigate
the unknowns of COVID-19 response
and recovery, advancing the processes
organizations can control is paramount
to meeting pandemic and non-pandemic
healthcare needs.

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Improved Processes Mean Improved Care
Insights on successful strategies, advanced
analytics tools, and proven skillsets can
guide process improvement leaders as
they continually aim for better outcomes,
patient experience, and lower costs.

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For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

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More about this topic
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Healthcare Process Improvement: Six Strategies for Organizationwide Transformation
A Sustainable Healthcare Emergency Management Framework: COVID-19 and Beyond
Holly Rimmasch, Chief Clinical Officer; Ed Corbett, MD, Medical Officer;
Anne Marie Bickmore, Senior VP, Company Operations
Healthcare Trends During COVID-19: Top Five Areas to Watch
Holly Rimmasch, Chief Clinical Officer; Ed Corbett, MD, Medical Officer
Using Improvement Science in Healthcare to Create True Change
Heather Schoonover, MN, ARNP-CNS, PHCNS-BC, FCNS, VP
Healthcare Analytics Platform: DOS Delivers the 7 Essential Components
Imran Qureshi, Chief Software Development Officer
AI-Assisted Decision Making: Healthcare’s Next Frontier
Health Catalyst Editors
The Digitization of Healthcare: Why the Right Approach Matters and Five Steps to Get There
Health Catalyst Editors

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Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
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