Changing Lanes

I was driving to work yesterday in the Tahoe (aka Mommy Mobile) since my car (aka Princess) has a flat. As I sped down the road with Cruise Control set – I couldn’t figure out why the Tahoe wasn’t slowing down as I approached a much slower moving vehicle. All of the sudden, I remembered that the Tahoe does not have the cruise control distance feature that Princess has built in to ebb and flow with traffic.  I slammed on the break as to not hit the vehicle in front of me. You see, the Princess car can practically drive itself. You set cruise control and it slows down as it approaches a vehicle and once that vehicle moves out of your lane it resumes its constant speed.

This change in vehicles has caused a number of issues for me this week. I have no hands free calling if I push a button on my steering wheel and say “Call Dad on Cell” it only changes the radio. When I go to change lanes there is no light telling me there is someone in my blind spot. When I go to back up, I actually have to look over my shoulder because the radio does not change into a back up camera picture. All fun and joking aside - This experience really relates to what we are seeing with devices and workflow design in healthcare. (Bet you didn’t see that coming.)

There are really two paradigm shifts. First, there is an expectation that a technology will provide more and require us to “do” less. This does not discount the fact that we still need human interaction. Princess really can’t drive herself, but Ford has developed ways to reduce the amount of action I need to take while driving. They looked at the driving requirements and removed steps out of the process that could be replaced with technology. They also provided technology that could enhance the driver’s ability to make decision. Isn’t that what all technology is supposed to do?

There is a warning that should be going off in your head at this point.  All of this high tech stuff is great but what do you do if the technology is different from unit to unit? What if Med-Surge is driving a Tahoe and Med-Oncology is driving a Princess? Caregivers float between units. They are asked to shift from one process to another without missing a beat. This is the second paradigm shift, technology must be flexible but the flexibility must be tempered by continuity. We ask a caregiver to go from driving a full featured princess car to driving a low featured school bus then we wonder why there are mistakes.

Workflow design should be based in finding commonalities and working to drive similarities between the units. Every car is different but every car has a turn signal, break lights, head lights, and there are requirements to use them within the standard confines of the law. Then that has to be monitored to drive the similarities to be consistencies.

Please heed my warning to all of you in Kansas City – especially those at Cerner because I pass your facility daily - If you are driving home and see a large Tahoe barreling up behind you – I recommend you just change lanes. I am not an aggressive driver but sometimes I forget what technology I have (or don’t have) at my finger tips.