Hear the story of a complicated workflow improvement case, and learn what you can do to help your own workflow…flow more smoothly.
Is something in your workflow not working? I’ll help you get the workflow improvement process off on the right foot in today’s episode.
Hi everybody! This is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication, ranked number 20 in the Top 100 Podcasts in Social Sciences. Giving you inspiration and strategies to improve engagement, experience and satisfaction since 2017. I’m Dr. Anne Marie Liebel, a researcher, consultant, and educator with expertise in communication and education. I’m here to dig into some of what we might take for granted about communication in our professional lives. If you want to strengthen the work you can do in your professional sphere, this is a place for you because communication touches everything. We’re here to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, make the difference we got into our jobs to make.
Yes, I had a client who identified a workflow problem that their staff was having. And this was happening right as a big new collaboration was about to be launched. Now first of all, their workflow was important to their service delivery. And they needed that workflow problem fixed pronto! And in a way that would be quick to implement because of this new collaboration. Because it had a lot to do with communication they called me. I’ll tell you what we did that I think can help your workflow improvement go smoothly.
Now this show, you may know, is about real problems faced by real professionals, and I have a holistic approach to communication. But we’ve had kind of a systems-level flow going on these past few weeks. I wonder what that indicates, right? I’ve had a couple episodes on quality improvement, now one on workflows, so maybe just in general people are thinking more in systems ways, which is good. The show started with patient-physician communication, hence the title, but a couple of years in, I started getting a lot of requests for interprofessional communication. Which definitely has kept on going, so I’ve included more in that in the show as well. This workflow improvement I was asked to help with involved patient communication, and interprofessional communication, and different organizations communicating with each other as well.
Now workflows in general are designed to help us get our work done by looking at the structures or patterns or flows underneath parts of our work that we tend to do often, or regularly repeat. And how these typically go, the steps we and others typically take. They can be handy for groups of any size. I even find them helpful as a small business owner.
And it’s hard to think of a workflow that doesn’t include communication. So many workflows in healthcare and public health include not only patient communication, but also interprofessional communication. And increasingly, like in this project, we’re seeing separate, different organizations tied into the same workflow, and therefore needing to communicate.
Public Health, we know, has a long history of this, but now with value-based care, the triple aim, social determinants of health, health systems are also integrating other organizations into their clinical workflows. If this is you, there’s a 2020 study on workflows and integrated care that I’ll drop into the show notes.
I also found this reminder from our friends at AHRQ: “Always keep in mind that workflow occurs between organizations, between people at a clinic, in one’s head, and before, during, or after a patient visit.” Now the one I’m talking about had all of the above, maybe yours does too! I’ll link to that AHRQ page because it has a tool on it on how to analyze workflow.
Because everyone with a workflow is probably aware there is also ongoing process improvement, which is also something I help with. We want to continue to assess workflows even after we’ve implemented them — because of all the benefits, right?
You’re likely familiar with these. Providers can improve efficiency, increase care coordination, improve error prevention, streamline processes, and otherwise deliver higher quality care, maybe even at a lower cost.
So I had this client, they had spotted a problem in their workflow, asked for my help, and in this case it was service delivery improvement. And there was a lot going on. It was very elaborate. Many complex interactions, sometimes two people, a dyad, sometimes the triad, many communication steps. We had multiple teams interacting, within teams and across teams, and also interacting with patients and caregivers. We had face-to-face communication, digital communication, voice communication.
But however much communication your workflow has, whatever kind of workflow it is, whatever and whoever your workflow includes, if you want to get those great benefits from your workflow, it needs to work well. And to help it work well, I suggest that you start here: talk to the people involved.
Before you do anything else, before you take another step, talk to the people who use this workflow.
I know, it can be so tempting to just take care of it yourself. Especially if you’re in a leadership position or the person on the team in charge of keeping your eye on the workflow. You call up that one colleague, between the two you come up with something. It’s faster, you got control of it. I get it. Please do this brainstorming. We need your brilliance.
I’m saying, talk to your people, and make that your starting point if it’s not already.
Why? Many reasons.
First of all, the people doing the work know a thing or two about the work. We are living through an extreme example of the lost opportunities when you don’t ask the people who know the work. These drastic cuts that we’re seeing in the federal government, dismantling of whole agencies and departments. As these have been going on, we’re hearing in every news outlet across the board, we’re hearing workers, leaders, directors in these agencies and departments saying, “We know change is needed, and we know how it can be done, and we’re willing to do it.” But these people are not being listened to, sometimes being fired. These people are best positioned to see the problems, understand where change is needed, how changes can be made, yes even drastic changes, and take responsibility for these changes. So remember, you have people like this in your organization. You’re probably one of them.
Another reason to talk to people first is to help you have more confidence in your decisions. The problem you see, validate it with your team. Once you agree on the problem, you’re halfway to a solution. And when you’ve talked to the people, you know you’re representing them, their voices, in any solution.
Another reason: I’ll tell you what my client said. They said, “Your approach was helpful because it aligned really well with our existing ways of working. You’re not coming in to teach us ‘you must use this,’ because people already have their ways of working and that creates the buy-in, that creates the forward momentum.”
I appreciated that, because my client, I suppose, could have quickly put together a solution on their own and told people “use this.” But what they really needed was a solution that would be meaningful, make Sense to people work It wasn’t just they needed a solution any solution, quickly. They needed one that worked quickly that could be implemented quickly and that’s also about cultural fit. And that’s what I work hard to do.
Talking with your people will help you with cultural fit. In fact, a lack of cultural fit or a lack of kind of cultural alignment, is a reason many initiatives struggle or fail. I just read a news story this week about improvement initiatives that might be backfiring, but are certainly cringey. One of them was Starbucks requiring baristas to write notes, like little friendly notes, on people’s cups in what the reporter called “forced joy” (here’s the author’s Linked post in case of firewall). They added that the only people who looked like they were having fun with this initiative, was the Starbucks employees who were going to TikTok and absolutely slamming this initiative. So, if you don’t want to deal with that kind of a headache, talk to your people first.
And it doesn’t have to be a big deal. We did a short, and I mean short, survey. We talked to a cross-section of folks. I met with people one-on-one for super brief conversations. You could do that. If you have regular meetings you could all grab a few minutes in the meeting. Just make sure you’re recording or capturing people’s suggestions somehow.
And now a bonus point: if your workflow includes patient communication like ours did, make sure you’re talking to patients as well. However you can. Maybe that patient advisory group. Again, ugh! Another step? Yes.
I got to talk directly to a patient and wow was it worth it! I was so grateful for that, because she made such an important contribution. She had an idea no one else had thought of. She was one of the last people I talked to. And her idea wasn’t mentioned in the literature that I read either. When she said it, I literally smacked my head. Why didn’t I think of that?! And when I presented it to the leadership, they had the same reaction. They’re like, “Oh, what a great point!”
So if you do this, if you talk to patients, please circle back with them and tell them the result of the workflow improvement, and the importance of their contribution.
Listen to your people. I loved working on this project and the client was happy too. So if you want expert help improving your workflow, or other process improvement activities where communication is involved, contact me. We can connect on LinkedIn or you can visit healthcommunicationpartners.com and click on contact. This has been “10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication” from Health Communication Partners, Audio Engineering and Music by Joe Liebel, Additionally Music by Alexis Rounds.
