The Use of Maturity/Capability Frameworks for Healthcare Process Assessment and Improvement

Process assessment enables to identify strengths and weaknesses of selected processes in a specific domain typically by referencing process maturity/capability frameworks. Assessment findings are usually transformed into action-items for process improvement. In healthcare domain where hospitals offer high-risk services to patients every day in a complex, dynamic, and multidisciplinary environment, establishing process thinking and effective process management is increasingly demanded but not an easy task to accomplish. In this study, we investigate the maturity/capability frameworks that are proposed or used for assessing and improving the healthcare processes. We searched the studies reported between the years 2000 and 2015 in scientific digital libraries and identified 29 studies out of 958 initially retrieved in a systematic way. This study provides an analysis of six studies out of 29 with respect to a number of research questions regarding context, scope, time coverage, and results as well as research method and contribution.