The workflow of any organization is a complex task that involves analyzing individuals’ jobs to ensure that the workflow (either current or projected) produces the desired outputs for the organization, supporting the organizational mission and vision. The tools usually used in the workflow evaluation process are benchmarking, checklists, flowcharts, interviews, and usability evaluation. For an analysis of a local hospital, this post is going to focus on flowcharts and benchmarks.
Flowcharts visually convey the steps of a process. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research, flowcharts can be used for patients’ check-ins, incoming calls, common office visits, PA office visits, and so on. Flowcharts are used to show all the steps of the process and find one or multiple sources of a problem or identify potential areas for improvement. In addition, they can be used to examine the handoffs in a process and identify personnel, groups, or entire departments responsible for the process or tasks. Moreover, flowcharts are essential to identify areas for improvement. They allow the staff to visualize their roles and are easy to learn and create. Flowcharts demonstrate whether the flow of events makes sense and is smooth or if there are a lot of back-and-forths (numerous handoffs) between players. On the downside, flowcharts require in-depth knowledge of the process. They are very useful within the hospital; however, they might not affect the sector in general.
Another tool that can be used in workflow evaluation is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a process of evaluating metrics or best practices from other organizations (either related or unrelated to your own) and then applying them to your organization. At large, benchmarking framework considering five dimensions such as cost-effectiveness, customer satisfaction, energy and resource efficiency, management efficacy, and operation and maintenance efficiency is used to facilitate the benchmarking of performance measurement in hospitals (Li et al., 2020). Benchmarking is used to find more options for potential solutions, bring in new ideas from outside the organization, determine what level of quality is possible and then specify areas that can be improved. However, benchmarking requires long-term commitment, it can be time-consuming, and, more importantly, competitors might not share the needed information. According to Purushotham et al. (2018), benchmarking can also be used in the IT area of the healthcare sector. If the industry standard is proposed, it would be easier for the members to follow, resulting in better standards for everyone.
Overall, both flowcharts and benchmarking tools are very useful in the healthcare sector to evaluate workflow. Flowcharts are easier to use and provide in-depth information; however, they require extensive knowledge to create. Benchmarking, on the other hand, is beneficial for the hospital and the healthcare sector in general if the industry standards are imposed. If not, benchmarking would be difficult because not all competitors would share their information. For HR purposes, flowcharts might be more useful for day-to-day activities and the possibility of improving the existing processes as well as personnel management. Benchmarking might be useful to set HR practices to the standards of the best players in the industry, which will also benefit the hospital. Overall, both tools are essential for HR management in the healthcare sector.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2022). Flowchart. Web.
Li, Y, Cao, L., Han, Y., Wei, J. (2020). Development of a conceptual benchmarking framework for healthcare facilities management: case study of Shanghai Municipal Hospitals. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. Vol. 146, Issue 1. Web.
Purushotham, S., Meng, C., Che, Z., Liu, Y. (2018). Benchmarking deep learning models on large healthcare datasets. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Vol 83, pp. 112-134. Web.