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You've probably conducted patient flow studies. The data are interesting and the charts appealing. But after hours of ruminating you realize you have no idea what to do next. That's because conventional patient flow studies do not reveal the sources of patient flow difficulties. But Patient Visit Redesign™ Patient Tracking and Mapping Methodology is insightfully revealing. It costs you practically nothing, it's fast, and it's illuminating.

There are four elements in this methodology:

• Tracking 10-12 patients through their entire visits;
• Translating these trackings into graphics, or "process maps".
• Identifying the root problems by examining patterns revealed by the maps.
• Collecting baseline data on patient visit cycle time and productivity.

Before moving on, let's define "process". This is the shorthand way of saying "work process". Redesign is all about redesigning work processes. A work process has several characteristics:

• A natural beginning and end.
• A sequence of defined steps that lead to a fairly predictable outcome.
• A defined way of organizing people involved in the process.
• Tools to allow people to work more efficiently.

Your trackings will help reveal all the above about your current visit process. You will be directly observing 10-12 patient visits, from the first painful minute to the last. From the time the patient enters your facility until the time the patient exits your facility.

You won't be in the exam room with the patient, but otherwise, the staff member doing the tracking is with the patient throughout the entire visit, whether it takes 20 minutes or three hours. This gets the "tracker" to see the visit process in its entirety, rather than only a piece of it from the perch of a daily job role. One tracker remarked: "I found myself in the waiting room for over two hours watching patients come and go, fall asleep and wake up. I watched children get grumpy and happy, then grumpy, then happy, over and over again. It was like time-lapsed photography."

Now download the tool: Visit Tracking ToolKit (PDF). After you complete the tracking exercise, read the next article: Step 2: Patient Visit Maps.