ABSTRACT
Although it may seem like it has taken many steps to get to the point of redesigning workflows and processes, this step represents the culmination of all previous efforts and paints the picture for going forward. It is in this step that the design for the future state is crafted. The above quote is particularly apropos because in health care, the clinical transformation that is expected to occur with health information technology (HIT) and electronic health records (EHRs) impacts both thought processes and actions. Clinical transformation is a fundamental change in the way healthcare professionals will think and act. This chapter describes the process to take to redesign workflows and processes, key process improvement characteristics to guide the redesign effort, and approaches for validating that the new process can work. Although some changes to workflows and processes will need a root cause analysis to “get to the bottom” of an issue with respect to an improvement opportunity, which is covered in Chapter 10, this chapter discusses specific areas of HIT and EHR that are the most challenging but most important to redesign.
