A meta-modeling technique for analyzing, designing and adapting healthcare processes: A process-deliverable perspective

Healthcare organizations have shown growing interest in implementing lean management. Through systematically identifying and eliminating waste, fewer resources are needed while similar or higher quality healthcare can be delivered. However, doing so demands a holistic view of the interrelationships between all sub-processes and their deliverables within a healthcare system. Gaining this view is challenging given the increasingly complex and interconnected nature of modern healthcare processes and its underlying information technology landscape. This paper presents a first step towards a meta-modeling technique to model healthcare processes that captures both the activity as well as outcome perspective. Practitioners can utilize this technique to analyze, design and adapt healthcare processes to optimize the overall system.