With these thoughts in mind, develop a list of questions about the patient flow process (covering input, throughput, and/or output phases) to ask your interviewee. Through these questions, you should find out about challenges they have encountered regarding patient flow, and ways they have addressed it. Phrase these questions in your own words. At minimum, your questions should encompass the following:
o What are crucial challenges this ED has faced in recent years related to patient flow?
o On what basis were these challenges identified? Were quantitative data used to identify and confirm the existence of problems, and if so, which types of data?
o Focusing on one of these challenges, what process improvement or reengineering efforts has this ED taken to address the challenge? Did the department follow Lean and/or Six Sigma or other comparable approaches in addressing this?
o Did the ED use any internal or external best practices to make these changes? If so, which ones?
o Did the organization or ED establish any metrics to determine if expected outcomes are being met? If so, what were the metrics?
o Did the implemented changes achieve expected outcomes?