A service blueprint approach to prioritize operational improvements in a new outpatient clinic

As a US-based health care system, Mayo Clinic faced considerable challenges opening a new affiliated outpatient facility in the UK at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which severely affected patient volumes and staffing. As COVID-19 restrictions were eased, the clinic had to prioritize gradual improvements to reestablish service while using resources responsibly. To assist in understanding the current state and to isolate challenges, we elected to develop a service blueprint. We describe how we did this during the COVID-19 pandemic with the use of both face-to-face and virtual services. In many industries, service blueprints are used to help with the design, delivery, and management of new and established services. Although they share some features with value stream mapping, service blueprints often focus on human tasks and the customer's service experience, while value stream maps emphasize information or product flows and capabilities. Several themes for prioritized improvement efforts were identified for future work. In addition, the service blueprint workshops led to a much better understanding of how each person's work affected the other team members and the patient experience. We learned that service blueprints are an efficient way to identify and anticipate critical operational interdependencies and team dynamics that will affect the patient experience when building new clinical services.