Solutions

Something kind of cool happened this morning that I’d like to share.  We were able to solve a problem in about 52 minutes that had been lingering for about 4-5 months.

I was assigned to a user request to enhance a process related to diabetic patients’ diets.  Doesn’t sound very impressive, but someone else had been working on this request since the summer.  That person could not work on it any longer, so I was assigned to it.

Well, a couple of my colleagues who were familiar with the request met with me this morning to get me up to speed.  They explained that my predecessor had a solution, but the physician community shot it down because it would have caused them some confusion.  They told me that we were back to square one.

I asked them what the current workflow was and wrote it down as they spoke just using pen and paper.  I also asked specific questions that were not central to the problem just so I could have a clear and complete picture in my mind (like “who carries the tray of food to the patient?”).

Then, I asked them what was wrong with the current workflow and documented that.

Next, I got a fresh sheet of paper and started drawing out what I understod (at a high level) they wanted the new workflow to be like.  I asked them some more questions and we agreed on a workflow that would meet the users’ needs.  Now, the question was how to make this happen within our EMR.

To recap, we nailed down the following:

1. The current state
2. The desired state
3. The limitations
4. Previous solutions that didn’t work and why

With this, getting the solution was relatively easy.  I proposed a fix that seemed very straightforward in my mind.  We started discussing it.  One of my colleagues immediately started poking around the system to gather information as we discussed it.  We bounced ideas off of each other and verified assumptions by looking in the system in real time.

Amazingly, we found a good solution that seemed viable within about 52 minutes.  The next steps are to test and iterate.

My colleagues clearly were happy that we had such a productive meeting and were able to come up with a solution in one sitting that they had been grappling with since the summer.

Lessons:

• When researching solutions to problems, you can get more done in a team than by yourself.
• Document the current state and get a clear picture in your mind of this.
• Identify limitations or restrictions your solution must abide by.
• Document the future state and verify that everyone agrees.
• Review previous ideas to solve the problem and why they didn’t work.
• Share ideas as a team and test/verify as quickly as possible (in realtime, if possible).

That’s what happened this morning! 🙂

Now, please let me know how you solve Healthcare IT problems related to your users’ workflows!