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Finding flow is hard, but possible

David Hodes, Founder

Why does our productivity rarely meet our own expectations? When planning our work, most of us make a reasonable effort to estimate how long we’ll need. While any given task seems perfectly doable on its own, when we string together a sequence of them we rarely achieve our target.

If we were as productive as we planned, we wouldn’t need to work overtime or sacrifice our weekends. So how can we get more done in the same time and be able to knock off work with no guilt or digital tethering to the office?

[Listen to audio version, read by David Hodes]

A major destructive force of productivity is multi-tasking. We imagine we’ll save time by juggling tasks along with the random demands placed on us by email, instant messaging, phone calls and interruptions from well-meaning colleagues. But this switching between tasks takes a major toll on our effectiveness.

In his book, Your Brain at Work, executive coach David Rock lays out some insights from neuroscience about how our brain really works. For example, the part of our brain responsible for executive function—that is, planning, reasoning and decision-making—is the most evolved, but also the most taxed. Found near the forehead, the pre-frontal cortex is likened by Rock to a theatre stage–and a very small one at that, even in the best and brightest amongst us.

“The part of our brain responsible for planning
is the most evolved, but also the most taxed”

Every time we think of something, it’s like calling someone up on stage from the dark recesses of the theatre. This effort of mental setup is highly energy intensive from a pure physiological perspective, requiring regular glucose refuelling just to keep up. Rock also makes the point that one of the most taxing activities of all is that of planning.

Why is this? Planning requires us to hold a whole series of thoughts in our minds at once while we flip between various combinations, like mentally playing out various scenes of a play. Only when we’ve made our decision do we send the audience backstage again, reducing our mental effort and returning our brain to a more steady state.

With this in mind, is it any wonder that the more interruptions we have, the more we need to do mental setups? And the more mental setups required, the less productive we become? We get less done and become more tired in the process, creating a vicious cycle that makes it ever more difficult to achieve what we have set out to do in a reasonable amount of time. How do we get into such a bind?

We’ve all had the experience that we are often more productive on the tasks that add the most value once everyone has gone home. Or that we choose to work from home because of too many interruptions at the office. That, surely, is a signal that something in our workplace needs fixing.

Our own worst enemy
The opposite of all this multitasking is the psychological state coined by renowned psychologist Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi—‘flow’. In flow, our work is challenging enough to stimulate us but not so difficult that we become anxious about our ability to do the task. We become engrossed and lose track of time. We can dramatically improve our output and feel satisfied as we do so. Yet even when we’ve experienced this enjoyable state, many of us sabotage our own ability to reach it.

In recent years, we’ve essentially trained ourselves to become addicted to the tiny packets of dopamine released when we feel our phone vibrate or hear an email or social media alert. We convince ourselves we’ll ‘just check this one’ but look up 20 minutes later—a different kind of losing track of time. (And, make no mistake, that time is lost.) Worse, research estimates that it takes us 18 minutes to fully return our attention to the deep state we were in before the interruption. The very things that were designed to make us more productive, such as instant messaging, are sapping our energy levels.

In short, while we may really want to engage deeply with a task, honing our mastery of complex problem-solving, we achieve that flow state all too fleetingly. What’s the solution?

There are really four core problems preventing us from working in flow:

  • knowing what to work on next
  • interruption by colleagues
  • technological distraction
  • self-sabotage

The challenge is that we conflate them—colleagues ping us on IM, or we procrastinate by ‘checking the news’ before we’ve allowed ourselves to enter a flow state, when the real root cause is being overwhelmed and unsure where to start. It’s too easy to think it’s just the way things are. But they don’t have to be.

Know the work
Start with the system. If we’re talking about work, we should have a shared vision and aligned objectives. The requirement for a coordinated set of priorities at all levels of work sits at the heart of Theory of Constraints (TOC), especially through Critical Chain project management and Drum Buffer Rope production management. TOC acts as a systemic synchronising engine, taking explicit account of load (expressed as work-plans) and capacity (expressed by the pool of resources available).

We should therefore be starting from an explicit understanding of what is reasonable and possible to achieve given the available resources. Further, through the use of buffer management, everyone gets to know which chains of work are most under pressure, as well as which task and resources are required to relieve that bottleneck on any given day.

When we know the most important tasks to work on, we can make a ‘to do’ list that puts those tasks at the top. New York Times journalist and author Charles Duhigg offers good advice about putting stretch goals at the top of the list and making lower-order tasks SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timebound). We not only know what’s next but have criteria against which we can weigh random interruptions: is that sudden meeting request going to help you with your stretch goal? If not, maybe pass on it.

David Rock suggests we do as much planning as we can before we start our work, doing it first thing in the morning if possible, when we have maximum energy. Others, including Mr Duhigg, recommend a slightly different approach and suggest planning your work the evening before. That way, when you sit down in the morning, you know exactly where to start and can use your energy most productively. My advice is to experiment and find what works for you.

Institutionalise ‘flow time’
We want our colleagues to respect our focus and wait for an appropriate time to have their questions answered, without barging into our mental workspace and forcing a new setup of the pre-frontal cortex once they have departed. So how can you make ‘flow time’ a reality for your team?

First, you need to decide for yourselves that you’ll all work smarter if you work in flow. So start by declaring ‘flow time’ as an inviolable part of the day or week when email and IM alerts are switched off, along with your phone. Your colleagues, regardless of rank, know this is a time for quiet, steady, task-engaged work and that they are forbidden from interrupting. If they know a time will come later in the day when they can ask whatever questions they want of whomever they want, they are more likely to honour the new way of working.

“Start by declaring ‘flow time’ as an inviolable part of the day”

Furthermore, they will begin to see one of two things happen: their seemingly urgent needs will be resolved by alternative means, or they will get a far higher quality of attention from the constrained resource once they have their full and undivided attention.

It shouldn’t be beyond the ken of your team to figure out a designated ‘flow time’ that respects local requirements and colleagues across time zones. Changing ingrained work habits is not that easy, but neither is it too difficult—the secret is to gradually wean ourselves off the multitasking, whilst simultaneously experiencing the joys of being able to apply ourselves to being fully present to the work at hand.

In my experience this has worked best by starting with, say, just half-day a week. So, for example, we could declare that from 8.30-13.00 on a Tuesday is ‘flow time’; meetings are banned and all electronic forms of communication switched off. (If you must work on emails, do so in offline mode.) Everyone respects the sanctity of doing his or her own work while letting others do theirs.

As the team gets used to this way of working, you can expand the proportion of flow time in any given week. It is practical wisdom to know that you cannot expect to work in flow the whole time you’re at work, but it should be possible to make it manage 50% of it in most instances. Also, when there is a system-level constraint, the team not working on it should do everything possible to subordinate to its needs of , leaving the constraint to do that which, at that moment, only the constraint can do.

Know thyself
We’ve looked at knowing which task to work on and how to institutionalise flow time. That leaves technology and self-sabotage. If you follow the flow-time rule above, you’ll quickly feel the benefit of ‘unplugging’ from alerts. It’s a small step to move from a block of time that everyone respects to chunks of extra unplugged time that work for you. You may feel obliged to keep IM channels open (although those usually have a ‘do not disturb’ sign) but why not turn email off as your default and only check, say, three times a day? You’ll find you can quickly despatch the short emails in one go where, previously, each one would have been an interruption. Some may no longer need answering at all!

Il PomodoroEven after all this, we’re only human. We’re frazzled by the news or by events at home or with colleagues. The Pomodoro technique is useful here. That’s when you set a timer (originally a tomato-shaped kitchen one, hence the name) for 25 minutes and tell yourself you’ll only focus for that length of time. Usually, though, once you pick just one task and focus you’ll almost feel your brainwaves lengthen from the choppy, frenetic alert-driven state to a more relaxed state. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself losing track of time and continuing happily on. Be aware, though, that we tend to hit diminishing returns around the 90-minute mark.

To wrap up, here are our key learnings:

  • avoid multitasking
  • agree clear priorities at all levels of work
  • commit to ‘flow time’
  • be mindful of technology and your own habits

Do all this and you will significantly increase the quantity of what you get done, the quality produced and the joy you get from doing your best. You’ll then find that allowing yourself a break—whether for a walk or even surfing the web—becomes not self-sabotage but a way to enter a different state again that’s good for diffuse thinking. But that’s a subject for another day.

 

____________________________

What’s next?

The change from standard thinking to Theory of Constraints (TOC) is both profound and exhilarating. To make it both fun and memorable, we use a business simulation we call The Right Stuff Workshop.

We’d love to run it with you. To learn more:

  • download the brochure (no email required)
  • schedule a call

    ____________________________

    Pomodoro image: Francesco Cirillo (CC licence)

    “If you change the way you look at things,
    the things you look at change”
—Dr Wayne Dyer

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Understanding the Jobs Patients Need Doing

David Hodes

A patient may ask for a smaller device, a clearer display or an easier app. Those requests matter, but they leave a deeper question unanswered: what is the person trying to accomplish, and why does the current approach make it difficult?

Someone using a monitoring device may want to understand whether their condition is changing, decide when to seek help or manage daily activities with greater confidence. The device is one means of achieving that outcome.

A powerful question asks how well your organization understands the jobs patients are trying to get done. A strong answer connects patient research with clearly defined outcome statements that become the formal user needs your teams use to build the design history file. Outcome-based user needs are easier to validate, flow more easily into design requirements, and result in faster time to market.

“A feature request describes a possible answer. Understanding the patient’s job to be done sets your design team up to deliver a better solution faster.”

Define the job from the patient perspective

A useful job statement describes an activity the patient needs to accomplish in a relevant context. It should remain understandable without naming your product or preferred technology.

“Use our app every day” describes behavior your organization wants. “Provide a way to recognize when a change in my condition requires professional advice” describes the outcome a patient actually desires.

The distinction affects research. If the team starts with the app, it will ask how to improve screens and interactions. Starting with the job opens questions about information, confidence, timing and support. The best solution may involve changes beyond the app.

Define a scope the team can investigate. “Live a healthier life” expresses an aspiration but is too broad to guide detailed engineering decisions on its own. “Minimize the time it takes to find a solution to my health concern without needing to talk to a doctor or call someone” gives a team a direction, a measure, an object of control and contextual clarifier(s).

Distinguish the job from the journey

Journey mapping shows how people move through a particular care pathway. Job mapping examines what they must accomplish to achieve their purpose, including the work surrounding the interaction with your solution.

The two perspectives complement each other. A journey may show that a patient waits for follow-up. The job perspective asks what they are trying to understand or decide while waiting.

This matters because current processes can become embedded in the team’s assumptions. Patients may need a reliable way to recognize an important change; they do not necessarily need the exact sequence of activities currently provided.

Use the journey to understand context and dependencies. Use the job to examine whether a different approach could help the patient achieve the desired outcome more effectively.

Study daily life where it happens

Patient research begins with observation and empathy interviews at the Gemba, the place where the activity actually occurs.

For patients, that place includes the home and the settings in which they manage health alongside ordinary responsibilities. Ask people to demonstrate routines, explain decisions and describe recent experiences.

Observe what they do. Immerse yourself in the circumstances surrounding the activity. Engage through questions that let them explain their purpose in their own language.

A person may say that managing treatment is straightforward while observation reveals multiple reminders, improvised storage or reliance on a partner. Those arrangements can reveal effort and uncertainty that have become familiar enough to go unreported.

The aim is to understand the why your solution will win before making any decisions about what your solution will do. Customers will want your solution because of the outcomes it gives them, not because of what you made.

Recruit for differences that affect the job

Patients with the same diagnosis may struggle with different parts of an activity. Differences in confidence, experience, resources and support can change how they define success.

Recruit participants whose circumstances reflect the population you intend to serve. Include relevant variations in health literacy, technology familiarity, physical ability and access to care. Are you targeting the tech savvy millennial, a busy parent trying to run a family with four kids or a retiree living in a managed healthcare facility?

Research should also examine emotional and social needs. A patient may want reassurance about managing a task alone or worry about drawing attention to a condition. Keep these needs visible alongside functional outcomes without assuming one design choice resolves them all.

Examine the complete job

The job mapping framework divides a job into eight recurring steps. These steps prompt investigation beyond the most visible interaction.

  1. Define. Establish what the patient needs to achieve and the circumstances that matter.
  2. Locate. Establish how the patient will find the information, materials or support required, including your solution.
  3. Prepare. Uncover how the patient will arrange the environment and resources for the job to be done.
  4. Confirm. Understand how the patient will make the decision to go forward with your solution and determine whether everything is ready for the intended next action steps.
  5. Execute. What outcomes matter to the patient as they get your solution and start using it. Often this is the ONLY job step the team looks at.
  6. Monitor. How will the patient assess and know for sure your solution is progressing successfully.
  7. Modify. Rarely do things work perfectly on the first try. Identify outcomes that are important to the patient when adjustments to the approach are needed when conditions or results require it.
  8. Conclude. Complete the set of outcomes by understanding how the patient completes the activity or prepares to repeat it.

Apply these prompts to actual patient work. Some steps may recur or overlap. The map should help the team discover needs, rather than force experience into an artificial sequence.

“The most useful innovation may help a patient prepare, recognize an exception or recover confidence before it changes the device itself.”

Turn patient language into outcome statements

Interviews generate verbatims: patients’ own descriptions of experiences, difficulties and expectations. Preserve that evidence, then interpret what each statement reveals about the job.

An illustrative verbatim might be, “I keep checking because I don’t know whether the reading matters.” The desired outcome may concern recognizing a meaningful change or understanding what action is appropriate.

A structured outcome statement identifies the direction of improvement, a measure, the object being controlled and relevant context. For example: “Minimize the time required to determine whether a change in a reading requires contacting my care team.”

Ask the team if there are uncovered outcomes that can set your solution apart related to how it is purchased, installed, received, set up, learned with training support, transported, maintained, upgraded, replaced or disposed.

This formulation gives research and design a clearer target. It does not establish a clinical threshold or promise that a device can safely make the decision independently, but often the features that will make your solution “easy to use” or set you apart will come from these outcome statements.

Preserve meaning as you organize the evidence

Several comments may describe the same need. One comment may contain multiple needs. Review the evidence carefully before combining it into a set of outcomes.

Remove duplication, separate distinct outcomes and retain links to the original accounts. Use plain language that patients can understand. Avoid embedding a particular feature in the statement.

Check the interpretation with participants or other appropriate reviewers. “I want fewer notifications” might mean reducing irrelevant interruptions while preserving important information. Treating it as a demand to suppress all alerts would misrepresent the need.

The output should be a coherent set of outcomes organized by job step. Completeness and clarity matter but typically it is ideal to have at least 100 and no more than 200 outcome statements for the team.

Measure importance and satisfaction separately

Qualitative research discovers needs and explains them. Quantitative research helps determine how widely they matter and how well existing approaches satisfy them.

Ask patients to rate the importance of each outcome and their satisfaction with their current ability to achieve it. Make the reference situation clear so respondents evaluate comparable experiences.

A high scoring importance outcome with low satisfaction deserves investigation. High satisfaction may indicate that the need is already well served so the team can use what already exists and put more time in creating innovative solutions to high importance low satisfaction outcomes. Low importance can reduce its priority, although clinical safety requirements cannot be dismissed through a popularity score.

Use a research design appropriate to the intended population. The outcome statements are easy to rate on a five point Likert scale. Choose population quantitative research in alignment with your target persona groups.

Identify opportunities within patient segments

The Outcome Driven Innovation approach uses importance and satisfaction to identify underserved outcomes. Its opportunity calculation adds importance to the positive gap between importance and satisfaction.

Use compatible scales and a clearly defined calculation. Interpret the result alongside the underlying responses, research quality and the clinical context.

Examine differences between groups. An outcome that appears adequately served overall may remain difficult for patients with less support or a different level of experience.

These differences can reveal meaningful segments based on unmet needs. They help the organization avoid treating demographic similarity as evidence that patients need the same solution. Prioritization should retain enough detail to explain whose outcome the proposed improvement will change.

Connect outcomes with development decisions

A target product profile brings the priority outcomes together with business goals, available technology and other relevant requirements. It helps the team agree what success should look like before committing to a concept.

Translate patient outcomes into design inputs and measurable requirements while preserving traceability to the evidence. Define which questions remain uncertain and what research or testing will resolve them.

Evaluate concepts against the outcomes they are intended to improve. Ask whether the proposed approach reduces effort, uncertainty or difficulty for the relevant patients and results in higher satisfaction scores than the baseline solution. A favorable reaction to an attractive prototype provides limited evidence unless the team can connect it with better execution of the job.

Keep patient progress connected to system performance

A priority patient need may involve work performed by a clinician, caregiver or service provider. Investigate those dependencies before deciding that a product change will solve the problem.

The Theory of Constraints helps identify where improvement can change the performance of the wider pathway. A better patient interaction can have limited effect if access to essential support remains constrained.

A Value Management Office can coordinate the initiatives needed to address these connected issues and keep investment aligned with patient outcomes.

“Patient insight becomes useful design evidence when the team can show which outcome matters, who struggles with it and how the solution improves it.”


What comes next

Use patient jobs to be done to review one priority patient job. Can your team state it clearly, map its steps and demonstrate which outcomes are highly important and poorly satisfied?

Start with observation and patient conversations. Build and validate the outcome statements, measure priorities and test concepts against them. That discipline gives Patient Centered Design a practical foundation for better products and more lives changed for good.

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The healthcare professional: a hidden constraint in patient flow

David Hodes

A healthcare professional can recognize the value of a medical device and still struggle to incorporate it into care. The referral may be incomplete. Diagnostic evidence may arrive late. Preparation may require extra staff. Follow-up may introduce work that nobody has agreed to own. Managing the patients before and after may require additional staff which adds risk to the business side of the practice.

Those difficulties affect the clinician’s ability to help patients reach and benefit from your solution. They deserve attention during development and throughout deployment.

The purpose is to understand how professionals encounter, assess, recommend and use a solution, and what constraints they encounter in using your solution.

A useful map connects the professional’s experience with patient flow. It helps the organization identify where support, coordination or design changes can improve the delivery of care.

“Clinical enthusiasm cannot create the time, information or supporting capacity needed to deliver a therapy.”

Identify the professionals who shape the pathway

Healthcare professionals perform different jobs at different stages. A referring practitioner, diagnostic specialist, interventional physician, nurse and educator may all influence whether the same patient receives successful care.

Define which groups participate in your pathway and what each contributes. Who recognizes the need? Who establishes eligibility? Who performs the procedure? Who trains the patient? Who monitors outcomes and manages exceptions? Who manages insurance?

Include people whose work makes these actions possible. Coordinators, technicians and administrative staff may arrange appointments, prepare equipment or assemble records. Their contribution can govern whether clinical time is used effectively.

The map should make dependencies visible across roles. It should also clarify which actions fall within your organization’s influence and which require collaboration with care providers or other affected parties.

Distinguish roles from personas

A professional title tells you part of the story. Experience, setting, case volume, access to support, business acumen and familiarity with the therapy can change the work considerably.

An experienced specialist in a well-supported center may encounter different difficulties from a clinician who sees the condition infrequently or works in a rural area. A nurse coordinating a dedicated service may have options unavailable to someone balancing that responsibility with other duties.

Develop personas around these differences. Examine confidence in interpreting evidence, decision authority, available time, training needs and exposure to clinical or organizational risk.

Use research to test the distinctions. Personas should explain variations in behavior and requirements. They should help the team understand why an approach that works in one setting may fail to support another.

Map the journey from first awareness to continuing care

The professional’s journey may begin with awareness of an unmet clinical need or information about a potential solution. It continues through evaluating evidence, discussing alternatives and deciding whether the therapy belongs in their practice.

Adoption can involve local approvals, purchasing, training, changes to referral patterns and coordination with other teams. Clinical use then includes preparation, treatment, documentation, handover and follow-up.

Map these activities without assuming a single linear sequence. Professionals may return to evidence review after a difficult case or revise their approach when colleagues raise concerns.

Distinguish the journey of adopting the therapy from the recurring journey of delivering it to each patient. Both matter, but the barriers and improvement measures can differ.

Capture decisions and dependencies

At each stage, ask what the professional is trying to accomplish and what must be available before the work can proceed.

A decision may depend on diagnostic results, a complete patient history, clear eligibility criteria or advice from another specialty. A procedure may depend on staff, equipment and an appropriate location. Follow-up may depend on information that must be captured earlier.

Show the handovers between roles, including who supplies information and who receives it. Record where uncertainty is resolved and where work is repeated.

This reveals how a product can add burden beyond its immediate interaction. A useful output may still consume scarce clinical time if the professional must retrieve, interpret, reformat and document it through separate systems.

Measure the work and the waiting

The time required for a clinical activity can differ greatly from the time a patient waits to receive it. Both belong on the map.

Measure preparation, clinical work, documentation and recovery from problems where relevant. Record queues, appointment delays and time lost waiting for missing information.

Distinguish professional effort from elapsed time. Some delays consume little active attention but prevent patients progressing. Others require repeated chasing, rescheduling or explanation, drawing capacity away from care.

Define a common unit of work so comparisons remain meaningful. Cases with different complexity may require different analysis. Averages alone can hide the patients or professionals who face the greatest difficulty.

The purpose is to understand usable capacity and patient progress in the actual working environment.

Find the capacity that governs patient flow

A pathway may depend on a small amount of specialist attention surrounded by many competing demands. Headcount alone will not show how much of that attention is available.

Examine what professionals spend their time on, including avoidable administration, repeated assessments and interruptions. Determine whether the relevant constraint is clinical expertise, supporting staff, diagnostic access, equipment or a policy governing work.

The Theory of Constraints helps focus improvement on the factor limiting the whole pathway. Increasing referrals to a service already unable to process them can lengthen waiting without increasing treatment.

Investigate the apparent bottleneck before choosing a response. Better preparation or coordination may release capacity. In other cases, additional resources or changes to the operating model will be necessary.

“The measure of a design improvement is its effect on clinical work and patient progress, including the work it creates elsewhere.”

Observe clinical work at the Gemba

The Gemba is where the work actually happens. Direct observation helps teams understand how professionals use information, equipment and judgment under real conditions.

Observe preparation, interruptions, handovers and the work following the visible procedure. Ask what the professional expected to receive and what they had to obtain independently. Capture workarounds and job “cheat sheets” that are homemade to make working with your solution easier.

Workarounds deserve particular attention. A clinician may keep a private checklist because the formal process omits an important step. A coordinator may repeatedly contact another service because information arrives inconsistently.

These practices reveal requirements that interviews alone may miss. Discuss observations with the people involved so the team does not mistake an isolated event for a routine pattern. Include different settings and experience levels in the research.

Build the baseline from several sources

Gather organizational knowledge and assess technology and business perspectives before moving toward a solution. Apply that discipline to the professional journey.

Use existing clinical insight, training questions, support records and prior implementation experience to draft the map. Identify assumptions and gaps.

Assess the technologies already supporting the work. Consider compatibility with the environment, availability, maintenance, reliability and the practical resources needed for use.

Clarify the business conditions surrounding adoption. Purchasing arrangements, competing initiatives, staffing decisions and local policies may determine whether a clinically attractive solution can be implemented.

This baseline makes research more focused. It also prevents the development team from proposing changes that depend on unavailable capability or unacknowledged commitments from others.

Involve the people who can enable change

Voice of Business research asks leaders about desired outcomes, frustrations, risks and obstacles. It also identifies decision makers and influencers who should participate early.

For a healthcare professional pathway, this means understanding who can authorize changes to responsibilities, processes, resources and technology.

Ask which other initiatives could affect implementation. Identify the independent reviewers who can challenge the team’s assumptions. Agree what success will look like from the perspective of clinical work and patient outcomes.

Make the findings visible to the team members and relevant leaders. A professional may welcome a new approach while lacking the authority to secure the resources it requires. The project needs a realistic route from individual support to organizational adoption.

Use FOCUS to improve the journey

Apply the five-step FOCUS process to the evidence gathered through mapping.

Find the constraint. Identify the activity or resource currently governing the flow of suitable patients through care.

Optimize for it. Protect scarce capacity from incomplete information, unnecessary preparation, avoidable interruptions and repeat work.

Collaborate around it. Coordinate upstream and downstream roles so patients, information and resources arrive when needed.

Uplift it. Add capability or change responsibilities, processes and technology when existing capacity cannot meet the need.

Start Again. Review the pathway after improvement and identify its new limiting factor.

Automation can help when the task is understood and the proposed change supports clinical work. Evaluate its consequences, including review effort, exception handling and any burden transferred to another professional.

Turn the map into a shared improvement plan

The map should lead to a manageable set of changes with clear owners and measures. Test those changes in relevant settings and examine their effect on both professional effort and patient progress.

A Value Management Office can connect the initiatives with priorities, resources and project decisions. Clinical teams and other participants must remain involved in judging whether the changes improve work in practice.

“An effective professional journey supports a clinician through the complete job, from readiness to follow-up.”


What comes next

Use the healthcare professional journey to examine one priority pathway. Can your team explain who performs the work, where capacity is lost and what currently limits patient progress?

Build the map with the professionals involved. Establish the baseline, test an improvement at the constraint and review the result. Patient Centered Design advances when the solution and the surrounding system make beneficial care easier to deliver reliably.

“`

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