The Quality Patient Care with Process Mapping

Service improvement seeks to continuously adapt and improve processes and pathways to benefit patients, careers and healthcare providers, and to support clinical excellence (NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, 2008).Recently, national initiatives have Emphasized the importance of frontline staff in service improvement; ensuring that these staff can influence and manage Change is essential for delivering new models of care (Kerridge, 2012). Clinical pathways and service processes have evolved over time, often through a local Response to workforce, service or clinical modifications rather than through conscious decisions to improve them. This can often result in complex patient pathways that lack logic; when asked why something happens, the answer can frequently be "because that's how it's always been done" rather than "because this is the best way". The aim of pathway and process reviews is to give a clear and full understanding of the existing state so problems can be identified and changes made to improve the patient experience and care pathway. One way of doing this is through process mapping, which aims to clarify the clinical pathway by providing a visual presentation of each step of the process (Hong, 2010).