A process mining system for improving patients' care path in an oncology center

Keywords

care management - care pathway - process mining - patient journey

Introduction: Patient Journey Maps are an emerging concept that visually maps the patients’ care path as they navigate the care continuum. This approach, when combined with Process Mining techniques, can early reveal bottlenecks in the patient's treatment flow, which can be very useful for patient navigation management and for optimization of care services in an oncology center. The goal of this study is to present a patient journey system based on process mining able to identify bottlenecks in the treatment workflow, aiming to improve the patient's care path.

Methods: A Patient journey system embedded with process mining was deployed in a private oncology center. The system allows the evaluation of the patient's journey on two levels: their path throughout the care continuum (activities) and their workflow tasks within the oncology center to receiving care services. Patient journeys from 2022 to 2024 were analyzed, which includes 2906 cases. Two kinds of delays were assessed: the time elapsed between the patient's initial evaluation and the beginning of treatment (level 1), and the waiting time to start the care workflow tasks, since the patient registration (level 2). The system uses a traffic light chart to show bottlenecks, whose limit target times were set at 30 days for the beginning of treatment and 30 minutes for waiting time of a care task.

Results: Considering the time of beginning the treatment, the average is 32.78 days, where 69.27% of patients start before 30 days, 11.82% between 30 and 45, and 6.38% after 90. The average time for the most prevalent cancers, respectively breast and prostate, is 27.1 and 33.2 days. The system also pointed out variations according to different health insurances; 54.12 days for the longest, and 22.3 for the shortest. Regarding the workflow care tasks, the average waiting times measured were 22.71, 17.19 and 20.84 minutes, respectively, for Encounters, Chemo, and Radio. Encounter was the task with the highest percentage of bottlenecks: 31.26%, where 60.03% of those occurring in the morning shift. There is also a variation according to the day of the week; Monday has the highest occurrence (34.88%) while Thursday has the lowest (27.61%).

Conclusions: Results show that process mining can be applied in a patient journey system to identify bottlenecks in the treatment workflow. Thus, this system can provide useful information for improving the patients' care path in an oncology center.

Corresponding author: Ricardo da Silva Santos (e-mail: [e-mail]).

 

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No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).

Publication History

Article published online:
06 May 2025