Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit   Workflow can be defined as a term used to describe the action or execution of a series of tasks in a prescribed sequence (McGonigle, & Mastrian, 2015). 

Workflow tools can help make it easier to redesign workflow and aid in the application of health information technology (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, n.d). 

For the purpose of this discussion three workflow tools were selected which include benchmarking interviews and usability evaluation.  Benchmarking  Benchmarking is a process of evaluating metrics or best practices from other organizations (either related or unrelated to your own) and then applying them to your organization (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, n.d). 

Benchmarking is an important tool that facilitators can use to motivate a practice to engage in improvement work and to help members of a practice understand where their performance falls in comparison to others. Benchmarking can stimulate healthy competition, as well as help members of a practice reflect more effectively on their own performance. Benchmarking can be done by reaching out to peers at other facilities and finding out what they do and if it works well. My facility has many other sister and we are the bigger where we encounter most of the problem. The common system that all we use is the point click care.  What I going to do is to contact all the leader of the entire facility sister, so we can have a meeting to debate about each system in place in each facility. I would want to physically see how the design of their system works and if the charting works well. Because nurse has to be involve in and informatics technology process, I would bring with me 2 to 3 clinical managers nurses to see the charting, so they could also see the new idea and give feedback on their feelings about it. Based on the information gathered I would plan a process to implement the new ideas into the charting system at our facility.  

Interviews provide a means of eliciting information from a group of individuals regarding their opinions, behavior, or knowledge (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, n.d). Here the interview involves 2 to more people and during the interview, data are collected and most of the time, it is the interviewee who provide data Here, I will set up an interview with 2 to 3 leaders form the sister facility where I will ask questions about sensitive issues, to determine users’ needs on the systems and to clarify some of my questions question.  

Usability evaluation  A usability evaluation is conducted to determine the extent to which a system is easy to use or “user friendly.” (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, n.d). Here I will determine if the new system is useful to user and if it is easy for to use it before implementation. Here I will determine the goal of my evaluation, what will be evaluated and how? For that I will choose some main staff from each sister facility who will conduct the survey to the rest of the staff to see how easy it is for them to use the informatics system. Based on the result, I will see what the areas of improvement before the implementation.  The article I will be use the information to improve workflow within your organization is:  Improvement of workflow and processes to ease and enrich meaningful use of health information technology (Singh & al., 2014).  In this article the author develop a self-contained workflow toolkit that uses ‘universal visual language’ and recognizes that most practices lack the required expertise and often need external assistance because the current methods (using esoteric charts or various software packages11 that require long and steep learning curves) are alien to health care workers and are, therefore, perceived to be barriers (Singh & al., 2014). It is a well established fact that, in any setting or industry, better management of work processes leads to improved value. Education and training of stakeholders in this management skill needs appropriate tools. The toolkit particularly addresses the ‘system-based practice’ and ‘practice-based learning and continuing improvement’ (Singh & al., 2014). Base on that, I will educate staff by using that pictorial tool for assessing the current and continuing redesigns of future workflows for achieving staff comfort, efficiency, communication, organization, productivity, effectiveness, safety, and satisfaction of patients and staff, all without having to seek outside help.  According to Caspi (2015), it is clear that informatics nurses will continue to be instrumental players in the analysis, implementation, and optimization of advanced information systems and emerging technologies that aim to improve the quality of patient care, while reducing costs.     

Caspi, H. (2015). The significant impact of nursing informatics on workflow, productivity. Healthcare Dive. Retrieved from https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/the-significant-impact…workflow…/387301  McGonigle,  D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of  knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett  Learning. Chapter 13, “Workflow and Beyond Meaningful Use”     Singh, R. Singh, A., Singh, R., Singh, R. (2014). Improvement of workflow and processes to ease and enrich meaningful use of health information technology. DOI: 10.2147/AMEP.S53307. Retrieved form Walden library.   U.S department of health and human services (n.d.b). Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit.http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt/community/health_it_tools_and_resources/919/workflow_assessment_for_health_it_toolkit/27865