Process mining in multidisciplinary healthcare

Abstract

Interprofessional collaboration is an essential part of patient-centered healthcare. However, adopting a multidisciplinary approach to healthcare comes with a number of challenges, such as miscommunication and role blurring, due to a lack of insight in healthcare processes. Process mining techniques can be used to extract process models from event data, for the purpose of process analysis. While process mining has been applied to healthcare often, little research has been done to assess the impact of process analysis using process mining techniques on process thinking among healthcare providers. In this case study at the knee division of UMC Utrecht Mobility Clinic, patient pathway models were extracted from event data using process mining techniques. The extracted process models were analysed and demonstrated during semi-structured interviews with medical staff from the clinic. The results of these interviews suggest that process analysis stimulates process thinking and enables healthcare providers to envision and reflect on the application of process mining in their work. Additionally, variation in response to process analysis might be related to role characteristics, which implies that these should be taken into account when implementing process mining in multidisciplinary healthcare.