Service management strategy in healthcare organizations: which processes should be automated first?

CISSS and CIUSSS organizations operate in complex, multi-service and multi-team environments where challenges can be difficult to navigate. Medical, clinical, technical, and administrative teams work together toward common goals, while also managing different priorities and operational realities.

Healthcare organizations are also evolving rapidly in the context of the Dubé reform and the creation of Santé Québec. This consolidation reinforces the need to coordinate service requests across the network — with different service users, confidentiality requirements, traceability expectations, and the challenge of avoiding duplicated data entry between departments. Law 25 adds another layer of complexity: every data flow must be documented, controlled, and demonstrable in the event of an audit.

Achieving productivity and efficiency goals therefore requires breaking down the silos between internal services. Today, patient journeys and equipment replacement processes must be viewed holistically rather than as a series of disconnected events.

Integrating and automating service requests through an ITSM platform can simplify the work of teams while quickly delivering significant organizational benefits. It helps ensure alignment between performance objectives and operational execution.

What key points should be considered before automating processes?

Healthcare organizations are increasingly being asked to do more with the same — or fewer — resources. Process automation is therefore a serious opportunity to improve productivity. However, successfully connecting multiple departments requires more than a technology-focused approach. Improving collaboration is primarily about process management and governance. Technology comes afterward to facilitate coordination between operational teams.

All stakeholders involved in the processes being automated should be brought together to identify interactions and understand dependencies between departments: IT teams, technical services, clinical teams, biomedical engineering, administrative departments, and HR teams.

The first step is to define which user profiles can initiate requests and which teams will be responsible for processing them. Naturally, organizations should prioritize eliminating remaining paper-based processes — a major source of inefficiency and frustration for both employees and patients.

One of the most important elements to align on is service level agreements (SLAs), which clearly define the expected processing times teams commit to. Once a request is submitted, automation can generate the required tasks across all relevant departments. Each team works within its area of responsibility, while the ITSM solution automatically follows up and alerts teams according to established timelines.

Process automation delivers numerous benefits:

• Improved user productivity
• Reduced service request processing times
• Real-time process monitoring and greater visibility into operations
• More effective collaboration and communication: everyone can track progress
• Complete and defensible traceability, ready for internal audits and MSSS audits

These benefits directly support continuity of care — the ultimate goal behind every service improvement initiative.

3 processes to automate first in healthcare organizations

To help CISSS and CIUSSS teams collaborate more effectively, we have found that automating three major types of requests delivers particularly strong results.

Because our ITSM software was developed from the beginning in partnership with healthcare organizations — more than 80% of Quebec healthcare organizations trust Octopus today, including 19 of 22 CISSS and CIUSSS organizations — we have built preconfigured templates into the solution to accelerate ITSM initiatives and simplify deployment.

Every new customer benefits from proven configurations developed across the healthcare network: you never start from scratch.

The most common request: onboarding a new employee or managing an employee departure

In every organization, welcoming and onboarding a new employee is a critical milestone — just like managing their departure. In healthcare organizations, this process can become particularly complex and time-consuming, especially with a workforce that includes many short-term contracts.

There are onboarding requirements such as training employees on tools and procedures, but also many operational tasks: creating the employee record in HR systems, issuing an access badge, assigning equipment, configuring Microsoft 365 accounts and multi-factor authentication, granting appropriate access rights to information systems, and providing an email address.

Many of these tasks must be completed in reverse when an employee leaves — and a significant portion can be automated.

To support this, preconfigured templates in Octopus help save time:

• New employee approval (team: IT, approval group: managers)
• Access request (team: IT, group: application owners)
• New computer approval (team: IT, approval group: procurement)
• Installation and preparation (team: IT, group: technicians)
• Office setup (team: technical services, group: facilities)
• Parking card request (team: security, group: access management)

Moving a patient, relocating an employee, or even moving an entire department

In healthcare organizations, patients frequently need to be transferred between departments or buildings. This requires coordinating transportation and ensuring that every involved team is informed of the departure and arrival so everything is ready at the right time.

These processes involve multiple teams and become even more complex when an entire department needs to be reorganized or relocated.

To automate all or part of these processes, we have integrated preconfigured templates into Octopus:

• Identification (team: IT, group: service desk)
• IT section (team: IT, group: technical support)
• Network section (team: IT, group: network)
• Furniture section (team: technical services, group: facilities)
• Repair section (team: technical services, group: facilities)

Replacing medical or IT equipment

All processes related to asset management often involve both IT teams and Biomedical Engineering (BME) teams. For healthcare organizations, a key requirement is the ability to track equipment history through the CMDB — extended to biomedical equipment with Octopus BME — allowing teams to verify that all required tests have been completed and continuously enrich the knowledge base.

This approach helps organizations capitalize on experience and apply ITIL continuous improvement principles.

An AI assistant integrated into the solution can now accelerate these processes even further: a clinician describes a need in natural language, the assistant classifies the request, routes it to the appropriate team, and automatically documents each step — without requiring a form to be completed.

Automating processes contributes to lasting improvements in service quality. To see how this can translate into your organization, request a demo — our experts understand the healthcare network and will show you how Octopus can make a difference.