Challenge

Metro Health was in need of a way to improve the efficiency of key functions within the hospital. With large amounts of paper and unnecessary form development, the hospital found itself with processes that were time consuming, unreliable and lacked accountability. Relying on interoffice “snail mail” to move processes along resulted in lost paperwork, process delays, lack of a reporting mechanism, and limited visibility into the status or history of a process. Moreover, employees had become frustrated with existing procedures and the inability to control processes.

The hospital decided to take control of its processes and find an automated means to get things done faster and more efficiently while getting rid of unnecessary work and the proliferation of paper– ultimately making employees more productive and creating greater visibility into core processes.

To help drive and manage its important business processes, Metro Health turned to Business Process Management (BPM) software from Metastorm. Metastorm BPM™ gave the hospital the functionality it needed to automate both small and large processes across the organization.

Solution

To date, the hospital has leveraged Metastorm BPM to automate over 40 processes throughout the organization – resulting in significant cost savings, the elimination of numerous paper forms, faster response times, and greater quality control.

Processes deployed include Information Services requests, purchasing processes, human resource processes such as employee requisition, personnel change of status, travel and mileage reimbursement, project requests, as well as more mission critical processes such as incident disclosure reporting and tracking, stock requisitions, capital requisitions, and equipment requisitions.

Using Metastorm BPM, Metro Health has created a seamless experience for its users by enabling immediate access to all forms and information. Hospital employees are now able to initiate processes by accessing forms displayed in their email client or Web interface – making more effective use of time and reducing frustration. The forms look similar to the paper forms they replaced, and when necessary, email reminders are sent to alert employees to the need for immediate action. Employees are also using the Watch List feature in Metastorm BPM which gives them the ability to monitor the status of all work-in-process as needed.

Metro Health has also integrated Metastorm BPM with its SQL server database to assist with the collection of employee information, eliminating the need to enter identification data available elsewhere in their system. This integration helps collect the right information on the employee and enforces security by populating form information using employee IDs.

In addition to automating its processes using Metastorm BPM, the hospital has also adopted the Lean methodology to run its business. Lean is a continuous improvement strategy used by organizations to accelerate response times and reduce the cost of processes by removing waste and achieving the highest level of productivity. The hospital has developed best practices using “Lean teams” to identify the inefficiencies in its most important business processes, to understand the value from an end-user perspective, to ensure that the organization understands "waste" and is able to develop a process without waste, and to ultimately make process improvement and efficiency one method to better serve their patients.

Results

By adopting the Lean methodology and using it in a regimented way for the past 18 months, the hospital has created an empowered workforce, fostered a continuous improvement culture, increased productivity by focusing on value-added processes, saved over a million dollars and progressed toward its most important goal of all – enhancing the patient experience.

Using Metastorm BPM, the hospital has saved money on paper costs by eliminating over forty paper forms, improved control and access to forms by hospital employees, reduced errors resulting from manual routing issues, and decreased time spent on paper-based administration. The process automation, management and control capabilities that Metastorm provides have also improved overall process and data accuracy and increased employee satisfaction by empowering users with access to information to ensure that work-in-process is accounted for and no longer lost or delayed. All processes are tracked and documented and the hospital now has visibility into historical workflow data for reporting, analysis, and organizational improvement.

Metro Health Hospital will continue to use Metastorm BPM and its Lean methodology well into the future. It is currently in the process of building a 170-acre health care village – a new concept in healthcare and only the second of its kind in the United States. This new concept will transform the way healthcare is delivered by creating a community of healthcare related services, such as fitness facilities, pharmacies and physician office buildings all in one place and all linked together using modern communication methods. Metro Health is applying Lean process analysis to all of the processes affected by its new facility and revising them appropriately to ensure it can operate in the new environment with minimal waste and optimal efficiency – ultimately creating the “hospital of the future” and providing the best patient experience possible.