Dr. Sarah Inman spent many years of her career managing a large clinical team of nearly 400 per diem nurses and patient care technicians as a former clinical staffing manager in a large healthcare system. As she worked with other healthcare organizations in her new capacity as Vice President of Healthcare Strategy at Improv, she realized how little had changed when it came to the excessive manual processes that clinical leaders are challenged by every day.
Reflecting on her past experiences and enormous logistical and administrative challenges, she partnered with her team at Improv and Process Street, a long-time partner specializing in Process Management, to explore a solution that would have made managing this massive workforce significantly more efficient. Working with Process Street on a proof of concept, they demonstrated the profound benefits of process automation in clinical competency management, particularly for healthcare organizations struggling with manual processes.
This case study examines the journey and results of this collaboration, underscoring how process automation can streamline and optimize critical operational tasks, improve compliance, and alleviate the burden on clinical staff and leaders.
Healthcare systems require annual evaluations and clinical competency checks to ensure all clinicians meet the highest standards for patient care. Dr. Inman’s former team was comprised of hundreds of per diem clinicians and operated across multiple locations and specialties, each with unique scheduling and certification requirements.
Compounding these logistical hurdles was the fact that each staff member’s competencies had to be evaluated based on their specific practice areas, requiring input and sign-off from various clinical leaders who had direct knowledge of each individual’s skills.
The process of managing, tracking, and completing competency assessments involved an arduous manual workflow, including:
Annual evaluations by hire month: Each employee required an annual evaluation based on their hire date, averaging over 30 evaluations monthly for one single department.
Multiple team collaborations: To accurately assess each clinician’s competencies, Dr. Inman and her team coordinated with leaders across multiple departments, each with distinct workflows and schedules.
Paperwork and tracking: Each evaluation involved printing, signing, and filing multiple pages of documents, all of which were eventually stored in physical personnel folders.
Risk of Errors: Given the heavy reliance on manual paperwork, the process was vulnerable to misfiling, incomplete documentation, and errors that could impact compliance readiness.
In working with Process Street more closely, Dr. Inman recognized that a process automation tool, if available during her tenure, would have completely transformed this labor-intensive process, saving time, reducing errors, and improving the efficiency of clinical competency tracking.
She saw an opportunity to leverage her own experiences to develop a process that could save fellow healthcare leaders and executives hours of time, audit-proof their organizations, and enhance the overall satisfaction of the many different players that were all involved in the annual evaluation process.
Working alongside Process Street and using their robust tool set, Dr. Inman and her team at Improv developed a proof of concept that reimagined the entire competency management process. Process Street is a workflow automation tool that allows users to build, automate, and track business processes, eliminating redundant steps and reducing manual effort.
The Improv team asked themselves, “How could we make this process better if Dr. Inman was still living it today?” and then utilized Process Street to streamline competency evaluations, automate notifications, and track task completions in real time, ultimately replacing a complicated manual system with a streamlined digital solution.
The proof of concept focused on automating clinical competency tracking from beginning to end, transforming a multi-step, paper-heavy process into a seamless digital workflow.
The primary components included:
Automated Workflow Triggers: Employee records in Process Street would automatically identify hire dates and initiate the competency review process for each clinician at the appropriate time.
Task Assignment and Notifications: Based on each clinician's work area and most frequent unit assignments, Process Street sent automatic notifications to the relevant clinical leaders, prompting them to complete the necessary evaluations and signoffs electronically.
Real-Time Dashboard and Progress Tracking: A centralized dashboard allowed Dr. Inman’s team to track the real-time status of evaluations, flag overdue assessments, and monitor task completion across the organization.
Electronic Documentation and Storage: Completed competency evaluations were stored electronically, directly within each clinician’s personnel file, accessible at any time with a single click.
Upon completion of the proof of concept, the data was undeniable, particularly from a time savings perspective. The introduction of Process Street as a process automation solution would have had a transformative impact, particularly in reducing time, minimizing errors, and streamlining compliance for healthcare organizations.
By automating notifications, task assignments, and record-keeping, Dr. Inman’s team saw substantial time savings. Conservatively estimated, this process automation would have saved at least 45 minutes per employee annually - a significant understatement, given the complex manual workflow previously in place, not to mention the travel necessary to drive between different locations. Across the 387 clinicians on her previous team, this would have translated to nearly 290 hours of time regained annually. That’s seven full working weeks in time savings.
In a large healthcare system, this impact becomes even more dramatic. If applied across, say, 2,000 clinicians, the time savings process automation would have been staggering, allowing clinical leaders to focus on higher-value activities, such as bedside care, staff mentoring, and hiring.
A key benefit of automation is its ability to reduce human error, an invaluable advantage in healthcare, where regulatory compliance is crucial. Process Street’s automated workflows ensured that every competency assessment was completed on time, accurately filed, and accessible when needed. With task reminders, standardized evaluation forms, and real-time tracking, the likelihood of missing or misfiling documents was greatly reduced.
Compliance readiness was also notably improved. Should an audit occur, all records would be readily available in a single digital repository, eliminating the risk of incomplete files or lost documents. This readiness reduced potential fines or penalties, a critical concern for healthcare organizations.
The burden of administrative tasks is a well-documented factor in clinical staff burnout. The process optimization achieved through Process Street alleviated the need for Dr. Inman’s team to spend hours completing paperwork, filing documents, and managing a vast manual process. This improvement in workload allowed clinical leaders to spend more time engaging directly with staff, mentoring, and supporting their professional growth.
For clinicians, automation brought greater transparency to the evaluation process. Staff could receive clear feedback, track their progress on competency requirements, and trust that their credentials were up to date, fostering a stronger sense of professional confidence and support from leadership.
The partnership between Dr. Sarah Inman’s team at Improv and Process Street demonstrated the profound impact of process automation on clinical workforce management. By streamlining a heavily manual, paper-driven process into a cohesive digital workflow, the team was able to showcase the substantial benefits of process automation, from time savings to compliance and staff well-being.
This case study highlights just one of many opportunities for automation in healthcare settings. Process automation tools like Process Street have the potential to radically optimize other critical workflows, such as onboarding, credentialing, and scheduling, further improving healthcare operations.
At Improv, Dr. Inman and her team are committed to helping healthcare organizations leverage automation to reduce administrative burdens, enhance staff well-being, and elevate patient care quality. The collaboration with Process Street exemplifies their commitment to innovation in healthcare, setting a new standard for what process automation can achieve in the industry.