Published by: Josel Bernardo-Fritz on 4/25/2011 4:27:32 PM
As part of the curriculum, participants of the 2010 Fellows Program completed a year-long project focused on moving organizations toward integrated delivery systems. These projects allowed Fellows to share their challenges, lessons learned and best practices, while also giving them the opportunity to bring back what they learned from each other to their own organizations.
One project worth highlighting comes from the University of Kentucky HealthCare (UK Healthcare). Fellows, Anne Smith, Jonathan Curtright, and Dr. Jay Zwischenberger (the Fellow who played the harmonica during last year’s annual conference dinner) titled their project, “Passing the Rat through the Snake,” where they took great strides in becoming more integrated by focusing on improving operations and access.
UK Healthcare was ranked 32% on the University HealthSystem Consortium percentile rank on patient satisfaction for access to care. Fellows from UK Healthcare decided to improve clinical access by supporting the integrated clinical enterprise through timely (< 10 business days) access for new patients and referring physician consultations. They also worked to increase accountability by ensuring that clinical management triads (Medical Director, Practice Managers, and Nursing Managers) own access within their respective ambulatory operations.
During the Fellows Program, the UK Healthcare team accomplished many successes towards their goals. They began by using existing access standards from physician leadership. They created a standardized report to identify appropriate clinics, and they centralized Patient Access Services data collection, which was sent to all clinical management triads. This transparency of data allowed colleagues to provide consultation to each other, which fostered multi-specialty group integration. The team also created a Patient Access Center where staff developed a scheduling protocol and managed a process for overall capacity.
This project helped decrease access for "third next available appointments" from as high as 45 days in the Neurosciences Department to 7 days. Within 5 months, the number of UK Healthcare’s “clinical practices meeting the access standards” increased from 56% to 73% and total new patient visits increased by 10%.
Although the team faced many challenges in their journey towards success, such as having un-managed ambulatory practice, limited management teams, and resistance to the model for ambulatory practices, they learned many valuable lessons. They found that the access standards were the key to success, data played an invaluable role, and infrastructure was critical.
Not only did the UK Healthcare team present us with an exceptional project during the last session, they also impressed us with Dr. Zwisch’s amazing harmonica skills!
-----
Josel Bernardo Fritz, MPH, CHES
Senior Education Associate
NAPH