The term workflow refers to the sequences of processes involved in administrative, industrial or other work related activities that begins from initiation to completion (Joeris; businessdictionary.com). The progression of the steps, tasks interactions and events in the work process is crucial to the production of productions and or services in an organization. Skipping any stage in the workflow encompasses a non-completion of a certain work, which will result to significant risks for the organization. As an example, if a healthcare provider is not following a workflow in its emergency department, the risk involve would mean life and death for the patient (Beul, 2008). In a healthcare setting, clinical workflow is a common terminology; it refers to a continuous process of service delivery improvement by integrating technological solutions to usual healthcare processes (Morgenstern).
Clinical workflow encompasses a series task, accomplishment benchmarks, accountability, priority and order of sequence (Bowens et al.). The importance of understanding workflow in a clinical setting will enable a healthcare institution to optimize its service delivery and significantly improve operations (Morgenstern). Apart from clinical workflow, there are other types of workflows such as Insurance claims Processing, which the name itself speaks its purpose. An example of insurance processing is the prescription insurance process in which the customer provides the pharmacists with the prescription bottle with a barcode sticker. The bottle will laser scanned to identify prescription validity and prescription validity. The information will be sent over to the prescription insurance company for approval and once approved the prescription bottle will be refilled. Another example is the healthcare data analytics in which the patient’s hospital records are being analyzed by the system to segregate the relevant information that will help the physician in analyzing the patient’s health condition.
Works Cited
Beul, Shirley, Sarah Mennicken, Martina Ziefle, Eva-Maria Jakobs, Daniel Wielpütz, Max Skorning, and Rolf Rossaint. "The Impact of Usability in Emergency Telemedical Services." Textlinguistics and Technical Communication (2008): n. pag. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. <http://www.comm.rwth-aachen.de/files/beul_et_al._ahfe.pdf>.
Bowens, Felicia M., Patricia A. Frye, and Warren A. Jones. "Health Information Technology: Integration of Clinical Workflow into Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records." Perspect Health Inf Manag 7.1 (2010): n. pag. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2966355/>.
Businessdictionary.com. "What is workflow? definition and meaning." BusinessDictionary.com. businessdictionary.com, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
Joeris , Gregor. "Defining Flexible Workflow Execution Behaviors." Intelligent Systems Department, TZI - Center for Computing Technologies (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 10 2013. <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.41.5400&rep=rep1&type=pdf>.
Morgenstern, Dan. "Clinical Workflow Analysis -Process Defect Identification." CPOE University (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 10 2013. <http://mehi.masstech.org/sites/mehi/files/documents/CPOE_Clinical_Workflow_Analysis.pdf>.
