Texas Health Resources
Assessing the Current State of Patient Registration to Create a New Frictionless Patient Registration Process.
Overview
This Texas Healthcare System is a consumer-first led organization connecting the patient journey across its network of providers, marketers and agents. They strive to create a culture of delivering world-class service by building tools, processes, and systems and utilizing data and insights to empower a comprehensive patient view across all touch points and instill confidence across the entire consumer journey to well-being.
The Problem
When evaluating key touch points along a patient’s healthcare journey, it was evident THR’s vision and current state were misaligned, specifically in Marketing and Patient Access. These focus areas were plagued with inconsistencies, organizational silos, limited self-service capabilities, manual operations, lack of personalization, incomplete views of campaign performance, and challenges leveraging data to support marketing strategies.
Role
Service Designer
Client
Texas Health Resources
Year
2022
Provided Expertise
User Research
Journey Mapping
Service Design
The Challenge
The primary goal of this engagement was to assess the current state of the patient registration process workflow and document the requirements of patient registration and update cycles to maintain registration status. Create a holistic view of the future state for patient registration, utilizing Epic as the single source of truth for patient data.
The Process
Research & Discovery
We sought to learn:
What is the current state of the registration workflow for inpatient & outpatient, both on the patient side and care giver side.
What are the pain points and areas of opportunity?
How can we use the existing technology to inform & enhance the overall experience?
Activities:
User Research
Business & stakeholder interviews
Patient interviews
Process Mapping
Workflow Analysis
Platform Demonstrations and Shadowing
Current State Journey Mapping
Future State Journey Mapping
Benchmark Analysis
Current State Journey Maps
Registration Workflows
Key Findings
Redundant, Manual Processes
The registration process for inpatient and outpatient services is consumed with manual and redundant processes and activities.
Patients provide information to inform registration multiple times
Clinics manually process paperwork
Work queues must be manually indexed and assigned to patient records
Change Process Management
There has been a significant amount of change to the registration process workflow. Because of that, the experience between departments and clinics can vary greatly for the patient.
Some clinics utilize shortcuts that deviate from protocol
Some clinics not fully educated on platform(s)
Under-utilization of tools and processes available
Application Integration
There are various applications with specific purposes as it relates to registration, but there is a disconnect of key information that could expedite registration for patients and providers.
Epic is the source of truth for patient information, but not everything flows from visit to visit
Registration for PAT not able to pull over information to register
MyChart does not currently have all registration materials available for virtual registration
Summary
Registration requirements across THPG are fundamentally the same. From outpatient to inpatient services, there is a standard set of data needed, that applies across scenarios. The main difference lies in the experience, on both patient and staff side.
Texas Health Resources has the necessary tools and technology to create a consistent and seamless, best-in-class experience for patients and providers.
But in order to accomplish that, we need to leverage those capabilities through automation of unnecessary tasks, integrating data and technology, as well as developing a Change Management Program.
Next Steps
Create a training plan and leverage the existing tools & technology to create universal experiences across the Texas Health network for both patients and providers.
Activities:
Data Mapping & data cleanse
Technical feasibility analysis of feature backlog for enhancements within Epic
Analysis of permissions and security settings by role
Creation of Change Management training plan