Care Pathways Newsletter, Created by Salim Sheikh, CEO, Blue-Crow

1. Newsletter June 2008
A message from the European Pathway Association
(www.E-P-A.org)
On 25th and 26th June 2008, the Integrated
Care Pathway (ICP) conference was organised
by Healthcare Events and the European Pathway
Association. It was the third edition of the ICP
conference that was organised by both parties.
We have experienced two wonderful days with
exciting presentations and workshops, aimed on Thoughts about Care Pathways 2008
both novice and experience delegates. On this The recent Care Pathways event was a great
year’s programme there was explicit attention for way in which health organisations from around
‘lean management’, statistics and evidence based Europe are creating a contemporary way in which
medicine. With these topics, the programme was to communicate both internally and externally
very attractive. the procedure of patient care for different
The three key ‘take home messages’ are: health conditions. However, this event has raised
1. Care pathways can be very effective tools in questions which we need to answer in order to
improving patient outcome and reducing progress with the future developments of care
variance in patient care, pathways.
2. Care pathways are very important when There was a multitude of variance in the way in
developing or implementing electronic patient which Care Pathways have been created, in terms
records, of both ascertaining information and publishing.
3. Care pathways are really international. There does not seem to be a consistent approach
in delivering this crucial element of 21st century
healthcare. In many other industries Business
A personal message from Blue-Crow Process Modelling (BPM) is widely used. There are
Ever since we first established our Healthcare several different standards which can be adopted to
Practice in 2006, our aim has been to develop suit the requirements of the industry/organisation,
innovative yet practical solutions which provide and these can be used to facilitate the progression
real benefit to our clients. We’ve been able to of this pivotal exercise.
achieve this goal through true consulting services
in the form of mentoring and collaboration. In order to continue the great work that has been
started there are several lessons that we can learn
Our easy-to-use tools, process modelling
from this event and the presentations that were
solutions and process improvement techniques,
given ;-
(which include LEAN and Six Sigma) allow us
to work with you to deliver care pathways that • Using care pathways as a way of delivering
drive real efficiency and success across your quality care standards
organisation resulting in better customer and • Delivery of best practice in healthcare in a
patient care. multi-disciplinary environment
Our emphasis on customers and our moto of • Developing a consistent but flexible approach
“customers-for-life” creates a spirit where we to pathway creation and structure
can be flexible, resourceful and individual in our
www.blue-crow.com
• Using care pathways in improving standards of
approach. This, we feel, enables us to provide quality
our customers with the best products and
services available in the Healthcare industry. • Using lean and six sigma to drive organisational
change
We welcome the opportunity to work with you
to deliver sustainable value to your organisation. • Not people processing, keeping the patient at
heart of service

2. • Care Pathways - Ability to showcase variance By redesigning the working practices around
• Clear communication the client, a shared assessment procedure was
agreed, reducing duplication and speeding up the
To develop further this strong foundation of
client journey (as less time would be spent on
knowledge we have to be able to find the balance
administration and freeing up staff to deliver the
between detail, design and quality. The mixture of
care the clients required).
these three elements will shape the effectiveness
of the care pathways. To see the full case study, go to:
Getting started with your Care Pathway http://www.blue-crow.com
project
Supporting Care Pathways Development
During the event many speakers provided
suggestions and example of how they’ve Blue-Crow is providing services and solutions
addressed the challenges of developing integrated that support the implementation of standardised,
care pathways. In summary, the key steps for best-practice clinical management in healthcare
successfully running such a project are: organisations, helping to improve and optimise
the care pathways.
Step 1) Define a clear objective for the project
In order to achieve more efficient diagnosis,
Step 2) Have all stakeholders involved and ensure
treatment and administrative processes, many
all relevant input is captured
organisations undertake process modelling and
Step 3) Define the scope and the boundaries of analysis work. To gain full advantage of this work
the pathways you are developing requires the use of models to make operational
Step 4) Understanding what is your current decisions. Whereas in the past decisions
situation to establish a baseline for change effecting systems, services or processes would
Step 5) Deploy the appropriate tools and be based on previous usage, trend analysis and
methodologies forecasting, Blue-Crow takes the modelling work
Step 6) Design your new optimised care pathways and combines it with current performance and
activity information to simulate both the “as is”
Step 7) Review and continuously update and
and “to be” situations.
improve your pathways
To achieve that, we attribute resources, both
Case Study –Transforming an NHS Trust
physical and financial, and assign these to each
– Through Care Pathways Redesign object within the process, combined with
Blue-Crow have been recently involved in a the inputting of waiting times, to provide a
number of Care Pathways process modelling & comprehensive approach to service redesign.
redesign projects. An overview of one of our Once all the information has been gathered and
assignments for an NHS trust is provided below: entered, we then run the data in a simulation
module. This allows the organisation to see the
Faced with several new initiatives and programmes, current capacity and monitor for any pressure
such as the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), points within the services that is provided.
Payment by Results (PbR) and Agenda for
Change; the trust had to quickly initiate a change For further details, go to: http:/www.blue-crow.com
management programme to adapt and transform
the organisation.
It was clear that these new initiatives and new
systems could not be effective without process
redesign and that change was required to improve
care delivery. Therefore, the focus of the project
was on clients (patients) and redesigning services
around their needs.The core of the project was to
examine the client’s journey through the services
provided and redesign them as appropriate. Initial
www.blue-crow.com
analysis identified that staff captured the same
information about the clients repeatedly, and used
over 100 variations on the same assessment.
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