Case: Patients are waiting over 2 hours to be seen by a provider in the General Hospital
Question:
Case: Patients are waiting over 2 hours to be seen by a provider in the General Hospital Emergency Room (ER) and once they have been seen it is another 2 hours for the provider to disposition the patient (admit to the hospital or discharged home). The patient Left Without Being Seen rate (those who leave the ER before being seen by a provider) is at 6%....triple the National average. A recent employee satisfaction survey identified that morale is the lowest it has been in years and the department manager just quit. The administration just hired a new ER manager who was the ER manager at another hospital's Emergency Department 3500 miles away. You are this new manager. Upon arrival, you received some data run by some of the best informatics staff in the country. The data identified the following:
Issue: 75% of staff are regularly 15 minutes late for their shift. This impacts change of shift, nurse-to- nurse report/patient hand-off communication (when nurses relay patient care information to the next nurse coming on). This also results in significant overtime expenses for the department, and employee satisfaction to be the lowest in years.
As the new manager, discuss the issue above in terms of what you feel has the most impact on the department operations and answer the questions below:
1. Identify and explain two cognitive biases that you feel would impact your decision making when addressing the issue you chose. 2. Using the issue you selected in Question 1, design a process map (workflow analysis) showing your recommended workflow/solution to address the issue. Please incorporate at least 2 decision points and use the proper shapes to identify the process steps.