Assessment Health IT Toolk: Understanding Workflow Design

a summary of three different concepts you found in “Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit” that would help in redesigning a workflow in the organization in which you work (or one with which you are familiar) and describe how you would apply them. Next, summarize the article you selected and assess how you could use the information to improve workflow within your organization. Finally, evaluate the importance of monitoring the effect of technology on workflow.
plz read sample below and I am attaching artcles 
So what is workflow? Workflow is the sequence of physical and mental tasks performed by various people within and between work environments (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, (n.d). There are a number of different tools that are available to help in the redesign of a workflow. These include: benchmarking, checklists, flowchart, interviews and usability evaluation (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, (n.d). The three I will briefly look at are benchmarking, flowchart and interview.
I currently split my time between pharmacy and nursing and we are currently in the process of changing our automated medication delivery system. Currently, three vendors are being evaluated. Irrespective of which is chosen, workflow will need to redesigned, so this is a timely topic.
Benchmarking: Evaluating best practices from other organizations and applying them to your work place (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, (n.d). We are doing this. The group that is working on this went to different hospitals in the area and saw how other automated dispensing systems are working. Also, discussed was workflow design each system.
Flowchart: Visually representing the steps of the process (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, (n.d). In regards to medication delivery, no one has flowcharted how the process goes. The number of steps it takes to get the home medication list gathered, entered, verified, pulled, delivered, loaded and administered is numbing. I think I will be tackling this one for my paper next week.
Interview: Gathering information about the process either in-person or electronically from individuals involved in the work (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, (n.d). This is important. A lot of decisions are made top-down instead of bottom-up from the people doing the work. My application of this tool would be to talk to all players involved. Nurses, Pharmacy staff, IT, physicians, etc. It is important to talk to all touch points of the system and elicit feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
The article I chose to summarize was: Design and implementation of a medication reconciliation kiosk: The Automated Patient History Intake Device (APHID) by Lesselroth et al. (2009). In it they note that errors associated with medication documentation account for a large fraction of preventable medical errors (Lesselroth et al., (2009). Reconciliation tools can reduce errors, it remains unclear how best to implement systems and processes that are reliable and sensitive to clinical workflow (Lesselroth et al., (2009). The authors describe the design and implementation of Automated Patient History Intake Device (APHID): that allow patients to review the names, dosage, frequency, and pictures of their medications before their appointment at an automated check-in kiosk (Lesselroth et al., (2009). Medication lists were then retrieved from the electronic health record and patient updates were captured and reviewed by providers at the clinic visit (Lesselroth et al., (2009). However, feedback provided found that physicians felt bogged down by the volume of medications to look at and try and reconcile. Most found that this medication reconciliation process was unpredictable and error-prone (Lesselroth et al., (2009).
As noted in McGonigle and Mastrian, (2012) technology provides a mechanism to improve quality of care and patient safety if it is implemented properly and takes workflow into consideration (p.264). Examining workflow surrounding the use of the new technology enables better use of the technology and more efficient work (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2012, p.265). Workflow analysis should not be considered optional but an integral piece of new technology implementations (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2012).