Healthcare Processes

Abstract

Process mining can be used to improve compliance and performance in hospitals and other care organizations. Before analyzing event data, we first provide an overview of the different types of care processes. We distinguish three levels of care: primary, secondary, and tertiary. We characterize five types of healthcare processes and link these to four basic types of data science questions: (a) What happened?, (b) Why did it happen?, (c) What will happen?, and (d) What is the best that can happen? Such questions can be answered using process mining. Using the characteristics of care processes, different questions may be posed. For example, the level of variability may influence the selection of the most suitable process mining technique.