Schedule Density: A Better Way to Measure Good Access

Last week, we determined that good patient access must incorporate the ease of delivering it – a frictionless process, from the patient’s perspective. We also delved into schedule utilization, which may fall short as a value-added metric unless template integrity exists.

Once the hard work of defining clinical expectations, building the schedules, and securing them has been solidified, it then becomes possible to add features to schedule utilization to transform it from an operational metric to one that incorporates the patients’ experience. Combined, these measures offer valuable insight into patient access.

This month the Member Spotlight is on Gregory Addicott, BSN, RN, CCRN, Clinical Triage Manager, Patient Access Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Learn more about Gregory below. Want to be a part of our PAC Member Spotlight? Fill out the form here or click here and email completed form to [email protected].

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How long have you been a member of the Patient Access Collaborative?:  1 year         

The Patient Access Collaborative is launching a podcast and we asked you to help us name it! We received so many clever and great name ideas and have settled on the winner.

Congratulations to Michael Palko with Duke University Health System for helping us name our new podcast: PAC’s All Access Pass! 

Does a metric answer the question – is our access good?

Good patient access is not easy to define and even harder to measure. It takes a combination of metrics to paint the full picture. This blog series examines one of the most common metrics used by access leaders – schedule utilization.

Terminology

The use of nomenclature in health care has long been problematic for industry stakeholders, let alone patients. Terms like “Otolaryngology” and “Hematology” require studies in ancient languages, and then we have a habit of shortening the terms – like “Gyn-Onc” (pronounced “guy-knee-onc”) to further complicate matters. Even experts stumble upon the vast array of acronyms that pepper the health care landscape – from ACO to MSP to QPP. As we center our efforts on improving access for patients, there may be opportunity to examine how shifts in our communication can prove beneficial.

We are excited to announce two new industry partners to the Patient Access Collaborative: Abax Health and Gozio Health! Read more about them below.

Abax Health

Abax Health’s AI powered clinical analytics and patient engagement platform, Clarity, is dedicated to ensuring every patient receives the care they need, when they need it, and that the health system realizes the revenue related to all of their missed procedures. Clarity uses advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify when a patient has a “missed referral” for a procedure and ensures that the procedure gets scheduled.  The platform analyzes millions of patient records to find missed referrals, quantifies the financial impact of the missed procedures, and then our concierge team of outreach specialists get to work reminding the patient of the procedure, educating the patient on its necessity, and then conducting all of the administrative scheduling and financial clearance steps (Patient Access functions) involved in getting that patient scheduled for the appointment. Visit their website.

This month the Member Spotlight is on Raisa Velasquez, Quality and Training Manager at Mount Sinai FPA Access Center. Learn more about Raisa below. Want to be a part of our PAC Member Spotlight? Fill out the form here or click here and email completed form to [email protected].

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How long have you been a member of the Patient Access Collaborative?: Not long but I have engaged with the organization and its content through my department leadership since 2017.

What do you like about being a member?: I appreciate that we at Mount Sinai are part of this organization, the collaboration across the nation to improve access and sharing best practices, wrapped around our central purpose of caring for our patients.

Can a tube of toothpaste inform our access improvement journey?

Behavioral science provides evidence that consumers are influenced by their experience and many other factors related to purchasing decisions. Price is often cited as the most influential component of our buying decision, but many other determinants come into play. This fact led researchers to develop a "better" experience to encourage us to brush our teeth. Over the years, various components like fluoride have been introduced by toothpaste manufacturers, but perhaps the greatest innovation was striped toothpaste in 1955 by Leonard Marraffino. According to Aquafresh, the stripes represent concepts - tooth decay prevention and breath freshening, which produced the first two-striped toothpaste based on Marraffino's patent. As consumers, we rarely think about the stripes and certainly don't consider which color fights tooth decay and which freshens our breath. But the novelty propelled an entire era of influential consumer packaging - think about the laundry pods, for example. We can "see" the product at work, something that ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft took advantage of as well. When we log onto our app to call a car, we are not getting a different product (a taxi serves the purpose just as well), we are getting a different experience. As consumers, we love it. 

February 15 | 12:00PM EST

You’ve heard of “The Great Resignation” and are well aware of staffing shortages and burnout rocking the healthcare industry. But what about “The Great Resilience”? Health systems are innovating at a higher and faster pace than ever before, using cutting-edge digital strategies and solutions to plug the gaps left from vacant positions and a record 47% of industry workers planning to exit healthcare by 2025. This panel will discuss key emerging technologies and their roles in empowering health systems to defend against burnout and labor shortages, while granting faster and easier access to care for patients.

This month the Member Spotlight is on Ritika Chowbey, Patient Access Improvement Data Analyst at Montefiore Medical Center. Learn more about Ritika below. Want to be a part of our PAC Member Spotlight? Fill out the form here or click here and email completed form to [email protected].

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How long have you been a member of the Patient Access Collaborative?:  8 Months           

What do you like about being a member?: I "love" how the Patient Access Collaborative community members help out each other by sharing their own experiences whether it's an organizational or a reporting problem.

Patient Access Collaborative Job Posting Spotlight: Senior Director of Ambulatory Access and Connected Care Center @ OHSU

I'm Interested

The Senior Director of Ambulatory Access and the Connected Care Center (C3) at Oregon Health and Science University will provide administrative leadership to the Connected Care Center and will partner with the operational and clinical leaders served by C3. They will also be accountable to driving access-related initiatives that support patient access services, provider and staff satisfaction, growth and capacity management, and advancement of processes and utilization of technology.

By Nkechi Okwu-Lawrence and Elizabeth Woodcock

With medications being such an integral part of population health management, handling prescription refills in an effective manner is vital to success. As access teams become more engaged in efforts to improve refill management, it’s important to identify best practices. The Patient Access Collaborative invited three members to present their approaches to refill management, all of which are proving to be a value-add to their organization.

Laddy Rua, Contact Center Manager, Prescription Line, and Kirsten Peck, Contact Center Supervisor, Prescription Line, from Baystate Health discussed the efforts to improve refill management by focusing on their employees. Medical assistants work in the Patient Access Center, answering inbound calls from pharmacies and patients. They use work pools that are strategically managed to level the workload among the team. Per diems are staffed during non-business hours to further maximize efficiencies. Onboarding protocols for new team members include shadowing, side-by-side mentoring, and weekly one-on-one’s.

USF Tampa General Physicians initiated its call center decades ago; while scheduling is the primary function, there is an inbound patient clinical concern team. The team, as described by Christine Kilfoyl, RN, BSN, and Desiree Thomas, LPN, consists of nurses, medical assistants, and a recently hired pharmacist. Approximately 60% of the daily inbound calls to the clinical concern team are for prescription refills, with the team fully handling 80% of these calls. Kilfoyl notes that department relationships are “very, very important” for their team, in order to share knowledge and maintain currency. “Carve outs will kill you,” is a mantra for the team, which aims to standardize workflows and adhere to institutional policies to successfully manage refills in a centralized manner.

Ami Shumway, Operations Director, Loma Linda University (LLU) Health, details the team’s focus on first call resolution. This goal was a key driver of hiring pharmacy technicians, aiming to improve patient satisfaction and reduce the excess administrative burden being placed on the clinical teams where possible. Shumway and other access leaders engaged the LLU School of Pharmacy, which has aided in the recruitment of the technicians, as well as pharmacists and pharmacy students. A mere six months into the project, Shumway highlights that first-call resolution has increased by a notable 64% for prescription-related calls.

For PAC members, head to Webinars to listen to the panel of experts who presented on August 16, 2022 under the title, “Centralized Refill Management.”

Calling all new members! Learn more about the resources and benefits that the Patient Access Collaborative has to offer; get answers to commonly asked questions, like "how do I post a question on the listserv?", "how do a pay a bill online?" and any other questions you might have. Existing members are welcome too!

Each meeting will feature the PAC team and a representative from our Membership and Recognition committee. This month Mike Bachman, Director of Access and Referral Management, Indiana University Health will be joining us. 

We want to spotlight you! As a member of PAC, you are part of a diverse, knowledgable and collaborative group and we love sharing your stories. The Member Spotlight segment allows us to shine a light on the people who make up PAC - what tips they have, what they take away from being a member of PAC, and personal tidbits to help you get to know them better.

If you'd like to share your story to be featured, please click here or the button below to fill out the quick form OR download as a word document and send to [email protected].

Join us for our 2023 Annual Virtual Call Center Conference on February 8.  The event is from 1:15 to 4:00pm EST with an optional, members-only virtual “lunch” from 12:30 to 1:15pm EST. 

This month the Member Spotlight is on Emily Hamilton, Senior Director at Mayo Clinic. Learn more about Emily below. Want to be a part of our PAC Member Spotlight? Fill out the form here.

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How long have you been a member of the Patient Access Collaborative?:  4 years

What do you like about being a member?: The ability to connect with a wide variety of Patient Access experts.

Join us on January 18 for Extending the Value of Contact Center Automation to Employee Engagement webinar. Speaker Tara Mahoney, Global Managing Director, Healthcare, Genesys will be discussing tools contact centers can use to enhance the patient experience.

Genesys provides tools for contact centers to deliver a reliable, scalable patient experience though leveraging the foundation of employee engagement. By supporting employees with automation designed to deliver first-call resolution, Genesys allows health systems to incorporate empathetic interactions with a rich engagement platform designed to:

Patient Access Collaborative Job Posting Spotlight: Senior Director of Ambulatory Access and Connected Care Center @ OHSU

I'm Interested

The Senior Director of Ambulatory Access and the Connected Care Center (C3) will provide administrative leadership to the Connected Care Center and will partner with the operational and clinical leaders served by C3. They will also be accountable to driving access-related initiatives that support patient access services, provider and staff satisfaction, growth and capacity management, and advancement of processes and utilization of technology.

We've recently updated our Members Only Resources page! It's your one-stop-shop for all things PAC - from past symposia handouts and benchmarks to annual reports and past webinar recordings - it's a great resources whether you're new to the organization or a longtime member.

(While you're at it... check out our New Member packet which is packed with information about PAC and membership.)

View Resources Page