Avoid misdiagnosing your healthcare business process management

by Bill Robertson

Summary

Benefits of working with experts to diagnose business needs and identify process improvements

Time: 3 minute read

In the modern medical world, the proliferation of online resources and “symptom checker" apps has contributed to the dangerous phenomenon of online misdiagnosis. While great in theory, making people think they can triage their own health issues raises some obvious concerns.

The glut of information online has created similar challenges for people looking to identify problems within their healthcare business management. The sheer volume of available resources is part of the issue. A simple Google search for “how to know if you have been hacked" nets more than 20 million results—often providing incongruous or directly contradictory information.

This tends to be particularly vexing for small and midsized businesses. Sticking with the medical analogy, a large enterprise can afford to keep a team of specialized doctors and nurses on the payroll (IT architects, security experts, BPM specialists) who have the expertise necessary to identify and treat specific problems within their field.

Small businesses often don't have the luxury of hiring specialists, so many business owners turn to the Internet to self-diagnose that strange rash their business has developed.

With technology, the challenge lies in finding the cause and fixing it. Unfortunately problems within your business processes can be much more nebulous and difficult to identify.

Turn to the experts

The fact that nearly any cloud technology solution can now be had with a few clicks and a credit card has complicated the issue of misdiagnosis. It's like being able to purchase powerful medical interventions over the counter. Just because something is easily available doesn't mean it's the right option for you—especially because many solutions don't interact well with one another. It's still important to consult an expert about which cloud services can address your needs most effectively and plot a coherent strategy for adoption and healthcare business process management.

You may have a number of outdated business processes sapping productivity, which are surviving simply because it's the way things have always been done. Bringing in an expert consultant can help provide a fresh perspective on where the breakdown in your healthcare business processes may be occurring.

Keep in mind, by transitioning technology or healthcare business process management to a third party, you also transition the responsibility for keeping them up and running. This effectively limits the possibility of misdiagnosis by reducing the variables your business needs to consider. Doing so also reduces the amount of time and internal resources you must dedicate to non-essential workflows or maintaining technology, allowing you to refocus them on growing your business.

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Consider the source

This is not to say that small business owners shouldn't be doing their own homework about parts of their healthcare business process management that may be outside of their personal areas of expertise. Being well informed is a key component of any decision, but not all sources of information are created equal.

There isn't exactly a high barrier to entry for posting something on the Internet, and it has an incredible ability to allow spurious information to spread like wildfire.

Before making any decisions about your business or technology based on something you read online, do a bit of checking into the provenance of the information. If it's an article, what's the author's background and area of expertise? What sort of evidence is cited in their guidance? Is it coming from, or sponsored by, a brand? If so, what's their motivation or what are they trying to sell you?

The most effective healthcare organizations know what they're great at and try to minimize the amount of time they spend on things that aren't areas of strength.

Technology and healthcare business process management tend to fall into the second category for many smaller companies. Leaving those pieces to the experts can avoid the significant time, cost and headaches that can result from a bad self-diagnosis.

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