One of the most common mistakes in healthcare operations work is jumping to process design before the stakeholder map is clear.
Who is being served by this function? What does the patient need from it? What does the clinical team need from it? What does the payer require? What does the organization need it to produce?
These aren't the same answer. Sometimes they're in direct tension.
A process built to satisfy only one stakeholder — say, the payer — often fails the patient. A process built only around patient preference may be unsustainable operationally.
Sound process design requires holding all of those roles in view at once — and making deliberate decisions about how to navigate the tensions between them.
This is where the relationship between the stakeholders and the servicing organization becomes critical. Not as an abstract concept, but as the actual foundation of what you're building.
I've worked in healthcare settings where this wasn't mapped — where processes were layered on top of processes, each one solving a problem for one stakeholder while creating problems for three others.
The work of untangling that starts with clarity. Who does what. What each party is responsible for. Where the hand-offs happen and who owns them.
That's not complexity. That's precision. And precision is what creates measurable impact.
When every stakeholder's role is understood before the first process is drawn, the work that follows has a foundation. Decisions have a reference point. And when something breaks — as it always does — the map tells you where to look.
Stakeholder clarity is not a preliminary step. It is the work.