The second article in our content series titled Professional Services: Practices for Behavioral Health Organizations, highlights how Qualifacts’ OnCall Health professional services team, including our Professional Services Director and Solutions Engineers, can help your behavioral health organization better understand and drive efficiency in your teams’ workflows. In this article, you’ll learn:
- The importance of mapping your telehealth workflows
- How workflow mapping and proserv generate ROI
- Strategies to start your workflow mapping process
Why map your teams’ workflows?
Mapping steps your team does daily key part of understanding how work is being done at your organization — what tools are being used to do it, and if there are any gaps. When speaking to vendors, it is common to say “our organization uses X”, when asked about tools. Oftentimes these are assumptions based on the fact that the team in question has been given access to that tool. However, access does not equal utilization. Decisions on how to best equip staff to do their jobs can’t be had intelligently without understanding the current state.
In talking to front-line staff about how they actually work in their day to day, you will quickly see that there are always workarounds that come up no matter the tools being used that will affect the way care is delivered. Mapping out these additional steps, the main points of the platform being used effectively by staff, and understanding which tools have utilization at all will help to inform whether you need additional tooling or platforms to support your team in delivering care.
How Qualifacts’ OnCall team brings professional services to your organization
The Qualifacts’ OnCall Professional Services (ProServ) team is ready to assist you with your organization’s marketing needs. Our services are tailored to organizations looking to achieve high levels of efficiency who are introducing workflow process automation for the first time.
When signing up for ProServ you will have access to our Director of Professional Services (workflow and platform subject matter expert (SME)), a Solutions Engineer (API and integrations SME), and trusted development and marketing resources. Your team is best served by having a mixture of operations professionals to discuss overarching strategy needs, and front-line staff to validate that solutions will meet day to day needs.
Workflow mapping is often perceived as an arduous or unnecessary process — busywork that is time consuming without providing actual benefit. The purpose of workflow mapping is threefold: Understanding the current state, understanding the goal state, and being able to clearly map the path to get from current state to the goal. Professional Services has resources available to assist with this process who are experts on workflow mapping, helping you understand the dependencies in your processes (what they rely on to function), and what the possibilities are to improve efficiency. In the next section, we will review some specific tactics we have seen success with.
An overview of tactics for your organization
Although every organization is different and unique in their approach to offering care, there are common strategies and tactics that behavioral health organizations can benefit from when mapping workflows. We will explore a few of these here.
1. Cross-functional feedback groups (before, during, and after launch)
Bringing together team members from each group who will be utilizing any tools you purchase to get clarity on needs. Oftentimes, the end users are not consulted or not given the opportunity to express their needs clearly when decisions on platforms are being made. It is important to ensure representation is there during the demo process of any new tools, workflow mapping processes, and to have staff available to ensure launch goes smoothly. Doing this early in the process also creates ambassadors who will extoll the virtues of the new workflows which has significant positive impacts for change management.
2. Keeping track of core functionality
Keeping an internal list of services that each tool in your tech stack provides will allow you and your team to see clearly where there is duplication, potential for misuse, and potential for improvement. Having a dedicated staff member on your team who maintains this list in the long term will also continue to serve your workflow mapping and improvement process to ensure as new platform features come out, your team is aware, and can roll them out smoothly. Additionally, ensuring that features you depend on are clearly mapped out will help not only in the day to day understanding of work being done, but also in future platform purchases.
3. Deciding on goal states
Where is your organization trying to get to? What are your operational short, medium, and long-term goals? To be able to achieve any kind of organizational change, having alignment on goals and individual contributor’s incentives to achieve those goals is a necessary component. Don’t be afraid to name the goal state, even if your team isn’t resourced appropriately in the moment – it’s all about incremental improvement that will lead to better process.
What’s next?
There are many ways to start the process of workflow mapping for your organization. Oftentimes, the biggest blockers are resources and time. Having an external team to work with you to map these extremely significant processes will save time and money down the line compared to purchasing the wrong tool. The Professional Services team at OnCall Health is here to help you map these processes to ensure you get the correct platforms and workflows now. To learn more about our ProServe team and capabilities, email oncallproserv@qualifacts.com
