GLENDALE, AZ – In healthcare, unlike other industries, business process management (BPM) covers two different areas, business processes and clinical workflow. With both, the desired outcome is the same – increased quality and efficiency.
Healthcare is the fourth largest consumer of BPM technology, behind financial/insurance, federal and local government and telecommunications, according to Jim Sinur, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. Despite the consumption, he said, “There is an up-and-down interest in BPM in healthcare.”
Sinur, who covers BPM across all industries, suspects that BPM implementation at hospitals is tied with available funding.
While he sees a lot of activity among payers to make the claims process much more efficient, “hospitals are ripe for BPM,” he said, in large part because of scarce resources, small operating margins, competition and shrinking reimbursements.
Some hospitals with limited resources are using BPM for simulation purposes. For instance, a hospital that has 15 physicians sharing four surgical theaters must optimize its expensive technology. BPM can simulate the ideal throughput to determine the normal duration of outpatient and inpatient activity and let clinicians schedule the use of such equipment as a CAT Scan machine to accommodate as many patients per day as possible.
BPM can also link together the disparate department systems within a hospital.
“Most hospitals have standard packages with stove-pipe functionality,” Sinur said. “People are asking for a solution to link together those packages. BPM is the missing ingredient.”
BPM’s ability to be both data- and event-centric with real-time business activity monitoring makes it a “must have” for hospitals. “The boundaries of healthcare have been stretched way beyond, and hospitals need BPM to cope,” Sinur said. “It extends the existing system. It gets more efficiency out of the old paradigm.”
That said, Sinur thinks the industry may need a “radical shift” to address its inefficiency in cost and quality of healthcare. While BPM is used today as a “coping mechanism,” he assured that BPM will be involved with the long-term change.
From the clinical perspective, workflow is starting to be embedded in computer-based record systems.
“It’s not a market trend yet,” cautioned Barry Hieb, research director for Gartner. “But we are seeing the possibility of putting information about the process of healthcare into the information system.”
The idea of BPM (or workflow, as Hieb calls it) on the clinical side is to let information systems drive and manage the process of care management. Ultimately, he said, the industry wants to take away from clinicians the mindless, repetitive tasks so they can focus more on making clinical decisions.
“This is new territory in the clinical side,” he said.
Through workflow, for instance, information systems can put out notices for such things as mammogram screenings, which often fall through the cracks. The system automates and offloads routine tasks and increases patient awareness and compliance.
BPM can also help hospitals and large physician groups link to evidence-based medicine. “Workflow makes it happen,” Hieb said.
Hieb said he witnessed a “sea change” on the clinical side about 18 months ago. “There’s been a switch from ‘nice to have’ to ‘survival strategy,’” he said. “BPM serves an important enabling role.”
That said, Hieb warned that while BPM implementation involves technology, the human factor, or cultural change, is just as critical. A hospital may have the technology, but if the staff isn’t on board, it’s back to square one.
BPM vendors with solutions for the healthcare industry (operational/administrative processes)
Appian Enterprise
BPM Suite
BEA
AquaLogic BPM Suite
Cape Clear Software
Cap Clear Orchestrator
FileNet (an IBM company)
Enterprise Content Management solutions
Fujitsu
Interstage Business Process Manager
Global 360 Inc.
BPM Solutions
IBM
Business Process Management
Metastorm Inc.
BPM Platform
Microsoft
BizTalk Server
Oracle
Business Process Analysis Suite
Pegasystems Inc.
SmartBPM Suite
Purkinje
CareSeries
SAP
NetWeaver
SeeBeyond (Sun Microsystems)
eInsight Business Process Manager 5
TIBCO Software
TIBCO iProcess Suite
Ultimus
BPM Suite
VFA
VFA.facility
Vitria Healthcare
BPA Suite
webMethods
BPM Suite
BPM vendors with workflow process to support clinical outcomes
Cerner
Cerner Millenium
Eclipsys
Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager
Epic Systems Corp.
EpicCare Inpatient
FileNet (an IBM company)
Enterprise Content Management solutions
GE Healthcare
Centricity
InforSense
InforSense HealthSense
InforSense KDEl
Lombardi Software Inc.
BPM software
McKesson
McKesson Horizon
Meditech
C/S Enterprise Medical Record
Misys Healthcare Systems
Misys CPR
Purkinje
CareSeries
Siemens
Siemens Soarian