You are a nurse informatics specialist at a regional medical center where there has been a continual throughput problem in the emergency department (ED). The average arrival-to-departure time for admitted patients is 527 minutes; the average arrival-to-departure time for discharged patients is 295 minutes; the door-to-diagnostic-evaluation time is 171 minutes; and the left without being seen (LWBS) rate is 8.7 percent. Your organization is considering a system redesign that may improve the situation in the ED; however, this redesign requires a workflow analysis to identify current bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
For this assessment, you will use system-generated time data that have been aggregated and presented as mean times for major steps in the workflow process. These mean times are specifically for patients triaged as ESI Level 3, meaning patients designated as "urgent stable." For more information on emergency severity index (ESI) levels, please visit the "ESI Levels" link in the web links section.
Requirements:
Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. Use the Turnitin Originality Report available in Taskstream as a guide for this measure of originality.
You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.
Using the mean times from the "Workflow Observations on ESI Level 3 Patients" attachment, create a basic or cross-functional workflow diagram in Microsoft Visio and include an interpretation of the diagram in a caption or on a separate page.
A. Diagram a detailed flowchart of the mean times in the "Workflow Observations on ESI Level 3 Patients" attachment using standard flowchart symbols. Ensure your diagram meets the following criteria:
- Apply appropriate shapes for each workflow step.
- Connect shapes using dynamic or auto connectors.
- Label each connector with the number of patients and the mean time between steps (e.g., N = 5, M = 21.4 minutes).
- When the workflow shape indicates a decision, diagram the options and flow changes that this decision generates.
- If you use a cross-functional diagram, include ED worker type swim lanes to designate steps in the process performed by the ED worker.
B. Briefly explain each aspect of the flowchart for hospital administrators and other stakeholders in a caption or on a separate page.
1. Identify three of the weakest areas of flow (i.e., bottlenecks or inefficiencies) and explain how you would improve one of the weak areas reduce throughput time.
C. Acknowledge sources, using APA-formatted in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
D. Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.