Maternity Patient Flowchart

As Diane's new assistant, you need to flowchart this process. Explain how the process might be improved once you have completed the chart. Please show the flowchart in your paper (pg 4).

- Once all steps are outlined visually in the flow chart it is easier to identify areas for improvement opportunities. In reviewing the flow of a maternity patient in its entirety, from check-in through discharge you now see how much the patient has the potential of being transported from floor to floor. A few suggestions on process improvement would be to centralize all maternity and neonatal care on one floor. This would prevent the patient from the inconvenience of having to travel throughout the hospital at a time when she may be emotionally fragile at this time, depending on the circumstances.

If a mother is scheduled for a Caesarean-section birth (i.e., the baby is removed from the womb surgically), how would this flowchart change?

- Due to the fact that this is a scheduled c-section, the pre-registration would have already taken place previously and the patient she be instructed where to report at that time. Since this is a scheduled delivery, the pregnant mother would report directly to the Labor & Delivery (L&D) room on the 2nd floor upon arrival to the hospital.

If all mothers were electronically (or manually) preregistered, how would the flowchart change?

- Instead of reporting to the registration office on the first floor the pregnant mother could report directly to the Labor and Delivery triage room on the 8th floor for her exam. We could then skip the step of inquiring whether or not the mother was pre-registered.

Describe in detail a process that the hospital could analyze, besides the ones mentioned in this case.

- The amount of processes that the hospital could analyze in an attempt to improve a single process are endless, so I will choose one I am familiar with which is pharmacy wait times. One way in which we can decrease pharmacy wait times for a single patient is to activate the prescription when it is ordered by the physician. Often times, the order is put into the system, but the prescription is not

activated until the patient reports to the pharmacy once they are done with their appointment or at time of discharge. At this point, the wait time begins. Most often, the patient is not feeling good or may be in pain and discomfort, but must prolong their stay at the hospital to wait on their medication before they can go home to relax and get the rest they need. Therefore, in regards to patient satisfaction, I think this process can be analyzed to see how to shave off the undesirable wait times a patient must endure for their medication.

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