project in progress

Client

• A mid-size, non-profit integrated health system in a smaller, high-growth market
• 130 physician medical group and 2000 employee health system
• ~45 primary care providers

The Challenge

The health system was struggling with long patient wait times to obtain primary care and specialty services. The percent of new patients to total patients has been decreasing annually as new competition has entered the city to meet these growing needs.

The Eleva Approach

• Completed Ambulatory assessment to identify causes of poor patient access to care as well as challenges to improving performance.
• Implemented new provider scheduling system and policies to ensure supply is stable and predictable.
• Standardized and simplified patient appointing processes, Epic templates and visit types, and scheduling guidelines. Piloting online scheduling.
• Implemented system-wide referral management processes including new Epic functions, standard workflows, and management reports.
• Implemented changes in roles and workflows in Primary Care to improve patient access on phone and Web/Inbasket as well as to improve provider efficiency to support increased visits.
• Developed and implemented a weekly and monthly set of dashboard reports to tie data from multiple areas for access management.
• Implemented a basic Lean daily management system with daily huddles, visual management boards and training on an improvement mindset.

The Results

• System-wide awareness and knowledge about access problem, importance of achieving access goals, and transparency of the work to sustain outcomes.
• Reduced overall wait time for new patients to been seen by 50% and increased new patient volumes by 50%.
• Achieved >95% filled provider schedules.
• Increased provider capacity by 20% through standardizing templates implementing new schedule management system, and workflow changes.