It is critical that you ask the following general questions every time. 

• Are there any steps in the process that are taking longer than they should?
• In case there are delays or missed deadlines, what is the primary factor for that?
• What are the steps that have the highest impact on delivery of care or billing, and is there any way to make them more efficient?
• Are some of the steps more financially straining than the rest? Why & how?

After asking general questions ask ones specific to your area of business each time. There may seem to be very many questions but don’t get overwhelmed – write them all down! They don’t all need to be addressed at once but having them written down will allow you to progressively improve things over time. 

Here are a few workflow process questions that might be relevant to IDD service providers – “How long does it take our behavioral specialist/nurse/other specialist to submit paper service notes?”, “What difficulties are the billing team having with paper logs?”, “How long is the company billing cycle and can it be shortened?”, “When was the last time we did an audit of the rate of submission of incomplete and inaccurate logs?”, “How much time does it take to have direct care staff resubmit rejected notes/logs?” “What does this lost time amount to in days and dollars?”, “How much are we paying for paper storage – onsite and at storage facilities?”, “Is this process associated with any of the reasons we were cited/recouped at our last audit?”, “Why do we still have supervisors traveling 3 days a week when we have online meeting capabilities?” 

After you have formulated the questions don’t forget to use root cause/cause effect analysis to help identify the real origin of the problem(s). You don’t want to waste time and money on a solution that doesn’t really cure the problem you’re targeting.