Workflows There are a few different concepts in the Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit. The first is that the workflow is a "sequence of mental and physical tasks." This is key to understanding the rest of the page. A workflow is how work is done, given a problem, how to solve it. The workflow is therefore the key to process improvement. By understanding how work is done right now, it is easier to see how the process can be improved, to meet whatever improvement (e.g. time, quality) is desired.

The second insight about workflows is that a workflow needs to be subject to analysis, in particular if there is a fault that is occurring – if something is amiss then the workflow should be examined to see where it can be repaired. The article provides a number of tools by which a workflow can be analyzed. The workflow analysis provides the basis for identifying areas of waste, such as inefficient or needless processes.

There are also workflow tools So a third insight from that page is to visualize the different workflows that might be common in a healthcare organization. Having a sense of what the major issues are with respect to the organization is important; understanding what a basic workflow looks like is also important. There are...

These processes can also be used to evaluate proposed workflows. For example, the proposed workflow can be mapped out and compared with the existing one, to ensure that there is genuinely an improvement.
Summary

The article on FluAlert looks at some of the issues that are impeding flu shot delivery. The study explored "pediatric providers' perceived barriers to influenza vaccine delivery." The study was conducted over four focus groups, and five individual interviews. These interviews identified several different barriers to influenza vaccine delivery. Amazingly, this included remembering to vaccine, because writing stuff down is hard. Time shortages and inadequate staffing were also identified. Basically, the barriers were that the doctors were poor managers, and borderline unprofessional in how they run their operation.

The conclusion was that these issues were probably intractable so an alert would help – the alert would trigger early in the patient visit, determine the patient's vaccine status, and create appropriate documentation. The latter…