In healthcare systems team members have to work together to achieve the common goal (Sales, Cooke, & Rosen, 2008). Research indicates that it is not enough to support the performance of isolated tasks and suboptimal communication is one of the most important causes of medical errors. Effective communication among the team members is a key component in aiding the value-added processes and this has resulted in improvement in the patient care quality (Baker et al, 2007). However, processes, which are computerized without careful analysis, would lead to inefficiencies (Koppel et al, 2008). By supporting communication and coordination, well-designed healthcare processes reduce the inefficiencies in the processes and make the management of complexities easier.
Developing Value-added Processes
In order to improve the communication among the healthcare team members, it is imperative that the processes are converted into value-added processes so that the information inputs can be converted into valuable outputs that help improving the provision of effective and quality healthcare. The development of value-added processes requires the institution of new activities and reorganization of many current activities. The first step in this direction is to identify and rank the most important processes of the organization. The next step is to establish an interdisciplinary team representing the healthcare team members, clinical units, and facilities that take part or contribute to the processes (Surowiecki, 2004).
The foremost task of the team is to define the standard practice of the organization clearly and the existing clinical practices, practices in respect of patient satisfaction and cost measures and performance targets need to be defined properly (Casale et al, 2007). It is better to align the incentives of the team members to the maximum extent possible. It has been proved that professional; team and organizational trust are some of the important motivators for improving the communication among the members and ensure the effective participation of team members in the process development.
Audit and Analysis
There is the need for conducting an audit with a feedback on the shared understanding where the processes are to be improved. Pay for performance programs established both internally and externally would be effective when they are made to reward the achievement of evidence-based process measures. Analysis of current processes and prospective risk assessment enable the translation of the practice in to different sub-processes and procedures including skill sets and information flows (Carayon et al, 2006)
Testing Monitoring and Feedback
It is important the communication processes are tested in small setting to confirm that they have been made ready to be deployed in all appropriate sites and venues of care. After the processes are implemented, the process needs to be optimized by continuous monitoring and feedback of process measures.
Maintaining Team Awareness
A better process-design can be achieved by human-factors engineering. The human factor engineering can provide both theoretical and pragmatic guidance to designing the process. Maintaining the shared awareness of the needs of the patients would enable a better coordination of the efforts of the team members in providing quality healthcare to the patients. Similarly, since such shared knowledge improves the organization’s awareness of the overall situation it contributes to the enhanced level of organizational efficiency (Schultz et al, 2007).
Automation of Routine Tasks
Another effective way of improving the communication processes within any healthcare setting is to create flexible processes, which help automate routine activities. The automation of routine tasks enables the physicians, nurses and other clinical technicians create value even in unstructured situations. The automation of routine tasks, in addition to supporting to standardization of routine tasks help in supporting intentional variation based on uncertainty that characterizes the patient’s condition, strength of the available evidence, needs of the patients, local factors affecting the communication processes and the professional judgment of the providers.