Healthcare facilities are avenues through which governments hope to provide citizens with equitable, quality, affordable, and accessible services. These facilities are engaged in different processes starting from admissions, transfers, medication, and discharge of patients. While these processes are crucial to realizing healthcare objectives, they may hamper the delivery of services. A failure to monitor these processes could lead to bottlenecks, duplication of services as well as inefficiency. The admissions process is perhaps more prone to this challenge, especially if patients have to go from one desk to another before they are cleared to receive services. Brown paper process flow analysis is one of the tools that could be used to examine and resolve the issues associated with the hospital admission process.
Reason for Choosing Admission Process
Admission is the first process in the hospital workflow, meaning that it determines how the subsequent processes will advance. Flaws in the admission process would derail emergency room operations, transfers to other hospitals, diagnosis, documentation, and other processes. On the other hand, well-coordinated and streamlined admissions will translate to efficiency, patient satisfaction, as well as saving time and costs. These outcomes justify that the admission process should be of significant concern for hospitals keen on delivering quality healthcare services. The hospital that I work in faces significant admissions challenges considering that it is a choice for many since it offers quality services. Admission is a challenge because the lack of enough beds means that new patients have to wait until they are available. Moreover, the admission staff has not managed to create rapport with patients, something that contributes to mistrust and delays in obtaining hospitalization forms.
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The individuals seeking these services should not be made to wait for hours before they can be able to receive care. During admissions, patients have to go from one desk to another, which translates to longer waiting times and frustrations. Longer waiting periods could have devastating effects, especially for patients with chronic illnesses or those that require emergency care. However, hospitals can improve their efficiency if they come with strategies for addressing the bottlenecks associated with the admissions process. One way of achieving this objective is by automating this process to enhance the effectiveness of operational procedures and improve the patient experience. Hospitals have a mandate of cutting back the amount of time that is spent from when individuals arrive in the facilities to the time they start receiving services.
The Tool for Addressing the Challenges in the Admission Process
Brown analysis is the tool of choice that could be used to examine the hospital's admission process. This tool visualizes processes by highlighting the actual steps, documentation, decision points, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the brown paper analysis focuses on client participation and involvement in addition to critiquing and assessing opportunities for improvement. This tool would be practical in addressing the challenges associated with the admission process since it helps identify and gain support for initiating and implementing changes. The best thing about this tool is that it captures processes as they currently work as opposed to how they ought to be. In this case, it is possible to focus on the bigger picture paving the way to improve efficiency processes. Brown paper analyses are self-explanatory since they use icons and illustrations as well as live documents, which can be traced from one step to the other. In such a case, the concerned stakeholders can be in a position to understand how the admission process works and what can be done to improve it further. This tool is crucial in improving hospital processes since it captures essential data, including cycle time, volume, quality, and quantity. This data provides healthcare providers with crucial information, which in turn informs the decision-making process. The providers will establish how many patients have been admitted, the time taken to admit them, and how satisfied they are with the process.
Brown paper analysis is a significant tool that facilitates and changes in process or leadership involvement in healthcare processes. This tool builds momentum for the organization that is under study by focusing on the real issues associated with the processes. Furthermore, the tool creates client ownership and involvement, considering that it incorporates documents filled by patients. An organization that uses brown paper analysis is in a position to identify improvement opportunities considering that the tool maps out the processes as they are. In particular, the analysis tool highlights the process's strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities paving the way for building a consensus. In the case of the admission process, the hospital management can establish where it is doing well and where it is failing. This realization can inform the decision-makers who then work towards improving the process to enhance efficiency and client experience. The tool is considered a practical framework that could be used in addressing the existing loopholes that are associated with duplication of work, delays, and broken interfaces in a specific process.
Lessons from the Analysis
Brown paper analysis has provided crucial insights into the working of hospital processes, most notably admissions. This crucial process informs all others as it provides hospitals with patients who may need short or long-term care while others need acute and preventive care. While admissions are such a necessary process, it could be a source of frustrations for the other processes, especially if the concerned stakeholders are inefficient. However, the challenges associated with this process could be addressed using brown paper analysis. This tool effectively captures the processes as they are as opposed to how they are supposed to work. This tool's aspect means that the stakeholders can get a clear picture of their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. In the case of admissions, the hospital will be able to see what is working and what is not and establish what is causing this outcome. The best aspect of this analysis is that it uses lie documents such as reports and memos to support how a process works. The incorporation of these documents helps track processes to establish if past loopholes have been addressed or not.
The application of brown paper analysis in the admission process provides important insights that could improve healthcare delivery. The findings of the analysis are usually placed in a location where the healthcare providers easily view it. In this way, they can relate to their process and put more effort into ensuring efficiency in the workflow. The best thing about this analysis is the fact that it is participative in that the individuals who handle a process have a chance to contribute to the final findings. This provision means that it is a collaborative framework where stakeholders come together to address loopholes. The success of brown paper analysis depends on how well it captures the feedback of all those involved in a particular process. In the case of admission, the analysis must incorporate the views of admitting staff, patients, their relatives, and hospital management. The stakeholders can collaborate in improving the processes by getting rid of duplication and bottlenecks. This collaboration based on the actuality of the process as captured by the brown paper analysis could help to improve the admission process in the hospital.
