Care is delivered. The operation around it is administered.
Enrolment, planning, appointments, notes, reminders and follow-up are work in their own right. They are what has to be coordinated so that care can happen, and they are where the administrative load accumulates.
How a patient moves through the operation.
Each step generates information the next step needs. The operation works when that information arrives without anyone carrying it.
- 01A person is enrolled.
- 02A treatment cycle is planned.
- 03Appointments are booked, moved and booked again.
- 04A consultation is recorded.
- 05Someone is reminded.
- 06A follow-up is arranged, sometimes somewhere else entirely.
Where the operational difficulty comes from.
- 01
Information has to travel.
Details, history and notes need to reach the person who needs them, at the point they need them, not afterwards.
- 02
Communication is part of the workflow.
Reminders, confirmations and follow-ups are operational steps. Treated as an afterthought, they become somebody’s day.
- 03
Coordination has no natural home.
Scheduling, rescheduling and follow-up planning tend to sit between systems rather than inside one, which means they sit with a person.
- 04
Every gap becomes a task.
What the systems do not carry, someone carries by hand.
A system for this environment is judged on how much of that coordination it can carry.
- 01
The record
- 02
The plan
- 03
The appointments
- 04
The communication
- 05
The follow-up
That is an architecture question rather than an interface question. The record, the plan, the appointments, the communication and the follow-up have to be parts of one system, or the gaps between them reappear as work.
We have built for this environment.
OP Care is software ONE BCG has built for healthcare operations. It is evidence of how we have translated coordination around enrolment, planning, appointments, communication and follow-up into a working system.
What is taking time away from care?
Tell us what the operation has to coordinate before care can happen, and where that coordination currently lives.