How Enterprise Architecture Enabled Admissions Growth for an Outpatient Surgery Center
🎯 The Business Strategy
A regional outpatient surgery center sets a strategic goal:
“Increase patient admissions by 20% year-over-year.”
Leadership believes growth is achievable through better referral conversion and faster intake, especially from affiliated providers. But something is stalling the volume.
🔍 EA Engaged to Translate Strategy into Execution
Enterprise Architecture is brought in to lead the diagnostic effort and ensure any technology investments directly support the admissions growth target.
Leverage Current State understanding
EA is able to leverage their understanding of the current state to conducts an accelerated and joint discovery with business and operations teams, focusing on admissions workflows and technology touchpoint. Activities include:
- Mapping the patient intake process from referral to scheduling
- Reviewing existing EHR and referral management tools
- Interviewing care coordinators and provider liaisons
Findings:
- The referral process is mostly manual—paper forms, fax, and phone calls
- Intake coordinators spend excessive time following up on missing patient data
- Scheduling happens after multiple handoffs, increasing cycle time
- No real-time integration with referring provider systems
💡 Technology-Driven Recommendation
Based on current-state gaps and the admissions growth goal, EA proposes a future-state solution powered by intelligent automation and interoperability.
Key Architecture Recommendations:
- Referral Intake Automation with AI
- Deploy AI/ML to scan incoming faxes/emails and extract key patient/referral data
- Use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to classify referral types and urgency
- Automate patient record creation in EHR
- Referring Provider Integration Layer
- Implement an interoperability platform (e.g., HL7/FHIR gateway)
- Allow secure electronic referrals and real-time status tracking from partner clinics
- Enable bi-directional communication and eliminate manual status calls
- Workflow Orchestration and Dashboards
- Digitize intake workflows with rule-based routing
- Add dashboards for referral conversion rates, cycle times, and bottlenecks
- Enable proactive exception handling
📈 Measurable Impact
Projected Outcomes (tied to business KPIs):
- Referral intake cycle time reduced by 60%
- Manual follow-ups cut by 75%
- Referral-to-schedule conversion rate improved by 30%
- Admissions volume increased by 18% in six months
🎓 Why This Matters
This initiative is a textbook example of EA translating strategy into execution:
- Business Driver: Admissions growth
- EA Action: Current-state analysis + process mapping
- Technology Solution: AI intake + provider integration
- Outcome: Operational efficiency and higher referral conversion
By owning the cross-functional design and driving alignment between business intent and technology delivery, EA proves its role as a strategic enabler—not just an architectural reviewer.
Tech Canvas 