Incorporating business process management, business ontology and business architecture in medication management quality

Managers and care providers in the health sector are expected to deliver safe, efficient and effective services within a resource constrained, complex system. Services are provided through execution of multiple processes. Healthcare organizations tend to be structured in functional based silos with process improvement efforts often focused on individual processes within the discrete silos. This silo based improvement approach fails to take into account upstream and downstream processes executed and managed in other silos. A patient’s journey will typically include processes from multiple silos and therefore, improvement efforts need to focus on end-to-end processes if the goal is to deliver a positive patient experience. In order to optimize processes in a complex adaptive system like healthcare and to effect meaningful change a combination of management disciplines is required. This research explored the use of Business Process Management (BPM), Business Architecture (BA) and Business Process Management Ontology (BPMO) as a comprehensive, integrated approach to design, redesign, evaluate, improve and monitor the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of medication management processes in a multi-site healthcare organization. The contribution of the research was threefold. First, identified benefits of applying BPM, BPMO and BA to increase organization capacity and improve the end-to-end process of medication management; second, demonstrated the application of an ontology and the business layer of enterprise architecture used in other sectors could be successfully utilized in the healthcare sector; and third, developed a process reference model for medication management processes in acute care and long term care facilities.