BUS303: Strategic Information Technology

This paper has focused on providing answers to five questions that we believe will contribute to better understanding by scholars and practitioners in health care management on the meaning and application of BPM. We started our paper by asking what is BPM and if it is relevant to health care. BPM is a tradition that is decades old, and despite the many definitions of BPM as applied to industry at large, we have emphasized the need to ground BPM in a language that can be easily understood and practiced by both clinicians and managers. BPM is focused on six core elements – strategic alignment, governance, methods, IT, people, and culture. This paper has provided several examples of applications in health care, though we have shown that when compared to the manufacturing industry, the application of BPM principles in health care seems to lag behind. Indeed, unless clinicians and managers are on the same level of understanding when aiming to provide integrated care to patients, the full expectations of BPM will not be achieved. This line of argumentation took us to the next question, namely, Why focus on quality in health care delivery? The quality control tradition has had an important impact on the development and implementation of BPM and the relationship of quality and efficiency within this tradition is of specific importance within the health care sector. With the continuous challenges being faced across health care systems, the push is for the maximization of resources and the minimization of waste without a reduction in the quality of patient care. Institute of Medicine's definition of quality of care, based on efficiency, accessibility, patient centeredness, equity, safety, and effectiveness, provides a sound platform on which clinicians and managers can identify clinical and operational processes that would ultimately enable them to provide health care delivery in a holistic and integrated manner. We have amply emphasized that clinicians and managers cannot work in isolation, and that health care organizations need to close the loop to ensure sustained and continuously improving optimal quality-of-care delivery. Above and beyond the complexity of the health care environment, there are challenges often arising from issues not necessarily within health care that impact on the performance of health systems. In this paper, we have highlighted rising costs, variations in quality, diversity in consumers, and concerns about value return on investment as the top challenges facing the health sector today. However, on a positive note, we have also discussed how BPM can play an important part to facilitate effective health care management, particularly in the future through seven practical steps for the way forward. We hereby end this paper by summarizing some of the attributes of BPM.

System thinking and BPM have been widely adopted in industry through process mapping, TQM, CQI, process reengineering, benchmarking, six sigma, risk management, and process-based performance measurement tools and techniques. Although health care industry adopted these approaches lately, the literature provides several examples from many countries where these have matured. There are evidences of achieving efficiency and patient satisfaction through application of various BPM methods across health care industry. On the one hand, process mapping, TQM, and CQI allow industry to adopt standardized practices and improve performance continuously. On the other hand, process reengineering and benchmarking facilitate radical improvement in patient's satisfaction. Six sigma, risk management, and process-based performance measurement help optimize performance through appropriate tradeoff between efficiency and patient responsiveness. These also integrate entire health care supply chain through appropriate synergies across material flow, patient flow, and information flow. Practicing of this philosophy calls for paradigm shift of managing today's health care from individual health unit management to entire health care supply chain management through equal emphases on reengineering processes, selecting right IT, transforming structure, and culture. Dynamic and transparent group decision-making with the help of decision support systems in strategic, tactical, and operational levels is also critical to achieve and maintain heath care supply chain integration.