1898 Process Mapping and RFID : Complementarities

Variability is inherent in health care and is a result of many complex interactions between patients and providers, and those among providers. Physician autonomy is one aspect that causes variability. Professionals with autonomy tend to have control over conditions, processes, and procedures (Walter & Lopez, 2008) and this leads to the existence of differentiated process pathways. Providers work in their respective silos and hence are often unaware of how their role in a process relates to others, and how their input impacts the entire process. This lack of awareness can result in decisions that negatively impact the entire process. Also, well intentioned attempts at improvement that lack a systems perspective can lead to sub-optimization (Simons & Moore, 1992). In an attempt to reduce process variability, hospitals have adopted conventional process mapping techniques. Process maps are best suited for routine linear transformations of homogeneous inputs into standard outputs, found in “factory” environments. However, the value obtained by hospitals using these maps is limited. For non-routine processes exhibited in health care scenarios, process issues cannot be resolved by forcing dynamic disjointed procedures into process maps (Biazzo, 2002). Thus, a significant gap exists between what is mapped and what actually occurs. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has the ability to automatically identify and collect data (Fosso Wamba, Lefebvre, Bendavid, & Lefebvre, 2008; E.W.T. Ngai, Poon, Suk, & Ng, 2009; Sellitto, Burgess, & Hawking, 2007; Ting, Kwok, Tsang, & Lee, 2011). The data obtained from RFID can be integrated with existing data to improve the process model. This also reduces the need for manual data collection which is the primary cause for missing and inaccurate data. Such data collection can enable understanding of complex interactions in health care, variability in the process, and support continuous process improvement efforts. The purpose is to review process mapping and RFID, their applications, benefits and drawbacks. This highlights the complementary nature of process mapping and RFID. Finally, issues relating to adoption of RFID and future research directions are identified.