Today’s competitive world demands effective and flexible strategies for meeting the ever-changing challenges to the healthcare industry. Several trends drive the need to reengineer healthcare delivery. Healthcare sectors are expanding, merging, and consolidating. There is growing demand to decrease costs and improve efficiency and access with no measurable negative iMPACT on quality. It is illogical to assume that old processes will meet future challenges. Instead, healthcare managers must look to other industries for proven approaches to become more cost-effective and efficient in the delivery of health services. Application of process modeling and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has enabled American manufacturing to regain its worldwide leadership position and can enable similar improvements in healthcare. BPR is a systematic approach to breaking complex functions into manageable, understandable processes by analyzing them and then implementing prioritized changes.

Despite the fact that the input, throughput, and output of healthcare processes is people, not machinery, re-engineering efforts can be successful in healthcare. The functional areas most amenable to BPR are the non-clinical areas, such as Billing, Supply Management, etc. The functions associated with these areas are similar across other industries, and reference models from other industries are often valuable. In clinical areas, some procedures or practices may take longer to evaluate, and there may be much more resistance to change. Reference models — and the analysis tools that support them — enable creative solutions to be tested and validated prior t