Clinical Process Modeling and Performance Measurement in Hospitals

Abstract

Quality of care is nowadays an important element of clinical health care delivery improvement efforts. Process-based quality measures can help, to support the effectiveness and efficiency of clinical care as well as to enhance a continuous performance measurement. Clinical process models can enable process monitoring and quality controlling in health care facilities. We present a clinical reference process model describing the integration of clinical meaningful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for acute diseases taking additionally into account the possibilities for automatic extraction of KPIs from clinical information systems and considering the characteristics of the clinical environment, such as flexible workflows and modular process structure during a patient's stay in hospital.