3 Ways BPM Can Improve Healthcare Processes
Last Updated November 5, 2021
With new regulations, plus additional data to gather, analyze and share, healthcare organizations can face tremendous challenges in not only integrating new processes but also continuing their mission of delivering quality patient care. Failure to meet these demands can result in serious financial losses, as well as patient dissatisfaction. However, there is a way to meet the challenges and avoid the pitfalls of change by using BPM in healthcare. BPM can help healthcare organizations maximize efficiency, reduce costs and better manage processes, all while helping to improve the quality of care patients receive.
What is BPM?
Business process management is a holistic approach that focuses on making improvements across an organization, rather than addressing a specific area at a time. The goal of BPM is to use automation to simplify processes and increase operational efficiency to meet business objectives and sustain organizational change.
Similar to other process improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma, BPM follows a five-step model to impact change called DMEMO, which stands for design, measure, execute, monitor and optimize. Each phase of DMEMO asks questions to help organizations align their processes and model solutions to drive business improvements that potentially can help save time and resources and reduce costs.
Why is BPM Suitable for Healthcare?
Process-driven healthcare organizations can better take advantage of data, respond to developments in the industry, reduce errors, improve the bottom line and provide a higher level of patient care.
In addition, they may be more likely to remain in compliance with federal and state regulations and requirements, such as specific data formats and real-time integration. Through BPM, health insurers and healthcare providers can help structure how information, systems and people interact. BPM can also help providers meet important deadlines, earn incentive payments and work toward continuously improving efficiency.
Inefficiencies in Healthcare Processes
Healthcare has historically been a manually intensive business, with patient admissions, charts, billing, and care performed in a hands-on manner. In addition, a shift away from primary care toward an increasing number of options for delivering patient care has resulted in more referrals, research, forms and diagnoses. Healthcare spending has also increased, while efficiencies decreased. Waste is also prevalent, with billions wasted annually worldwide.
According to a 2019 study in the JAMA Network titled, Waste in the US Health Care System, the United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, and the estimated cost of waste in the healthcare system ranges from $760 billion to $935 billion annually, which equates to about 25% of all healthcare spending.
Healthcare providers have been under pressure to transform their business models toward a patient-centric, data-driven approach, and to reduce inefficiencies and eliminate waste to keep the cost of healthcare from spiraling out of control. Investing in more robust information systems paved the way for optimizing processes and coordinating the exchange of information required to deliver the end product of quality patient care.
Business Process Management Examples in Healthcare
As healthcare rapidly evolves, the industry requires tools that can keep up. Here are three examples of vital healthcare processes that can be improved with BPM.
Claims Processing
Claims processing is a complex task that also encompasses compliance and reporting activities, and requires a smooth flow of information. BPM technology can simplify these processes by streamlining each associated activity. Claims and patient appeals can be handled more quickly and monitored at every step, to make it easier to track and prioritize claims.
Big Data
Big Data refers to the massive amount of data now available to businesses through the proliferation of the Internet. It is defined in terms of volume, velocity and variety. Thanks to electronic health records, a rapidly growing amount of healthcare information is now available and shareable. BPM technology allows organizations to manage their data and improve the way it is utilized.
For example, monitoring regional disease trends can help gauge the effectiveness of certain vaccines and predict future needs. BPM offers opportunities to leverage big data to improve healthcare for individuals and the general population, through preventive care and proactive responses.
Software Applications
BPM can help fill in the gaps that occur when multiple software applications are used in performing routine healthcare processes. It forges links that capture information not covered by existing applications and provides information more quickly to expedite patient care. BPM also bridges gaps from manual functions, such as face-to-face or email patient interactions, that can raise costs and place an organization at risk of non-compliance.
BPM Can Make Healthcare More Consistent
The healthcare industry has not historically been recognized for its consistency, which has led to tremendous waste and lower levels of patient care. When BPM is at the core of a healthcare organization’s approach to business, it allows people, systems and information to interact with greater consistency. . According to the JAMA Network report, interventions to remove waste represents an opportunity to reduce the increases in U.S. health care spending by $191 billion to $286 billion, a potential 25% reduction in the total cost of waste. Applying BPM can fundamentally change the way the business of healthcare is accomplished, with less waste, cost savings, streamlined processes, increased compliance and better patient care.
