Improving Healthcare Processes through Small-Scale Innovations

Business Process (BP) Improvement remains one of the core activities of Business Process Management (BPM) today. It is often expected to result in cost reductions and process efficiency, typically achieved through automation. Research described in this paper focuses on ongoing improvement of healthcare BPs involving knowledge work. Through an exploratory case study, conducted in a real life organization named "SuperClinic", this research challenges the underlying assumptions behind process improvement, showing that in the explored case, their "to-be" customer-facing knowledge-intensive processes were made slower and more expensive, yet considered and confirmed to be significantly improved. As these knowledge-centered BP improvement initiatives were implemented though small-scale innovations, by process participants (knowledge workers) themselves this research critically analyses the role of process analysts in this context and offers new opportunities for BPM-related research.