Enhancing business process flexibility in an emergency care process

Business Process Management (BPM) is being increasingly adopted to streamline healthcare service delivery and management processes. Emergency departments (ED) are very complex. To operate effectively and create value, EDs must be flexible and have the ability to rapidly adapt to the highly variable needs of patients. In this paper, we provide models for a real-world scenario emergency care (EC) process, and elicit its flexibility needs using interviews with the EC process participants. We then use a guidance tool to help with the choice of the most suitable Business Process Management System (BPMS), regarding the flexibility needs elicited. We validate this choice by modelling the new flexibility enhanced EC process with one of the advised BPMSs, and analyse its support regarding the elicited flexibility needs.