The first question regarding this case study is what features of the appointment scheduling system were crucial in capturing “many grateful patients.” As I read the case, some of the features that strike out to me are as follows: (1) a careful allotment of proper time to each patient according to the individual’s needs; (2) giving each patient a specific time such as 10:30; (3) keeping openings in the time slot for emergency patients, (4) punctuality and strict rules against no-shows, and (5) having adequate amount of examining rooms and assistants. The second question for this case is what procedures were followed to keep the appointment system flexible enough to accommodate the emergency cases, and yet be able to keep up with the other patients’ appointments. The assistants are instructed beforehand to keep openings in the time slot for emergency cases. The number of openings is dependent on what times of the week that is available and possibly different seasons. Most of these emergency cases are taken care of after initial patient visits are completed. However, if there is an interruption due to a short notice emergency case, the doctor would still be able to catch up without having to reschedule. If that emergency case happens to be longer, patients are given the option to reschedule for a new appointment or wait. If the patient chooses to wait, the assistants would try and fit them into one of the emergency cases slots. The third question asks how the special
Physicians located within wealthier and more populous areas have slightly better access to equipment and infrastructure, but the conditions differ only slightly. Doctors are extremely rushed with a constant overflow of patients and consistently working in hot rooms with little air circulation. This is problem does not only exist in the public clinics of general physicians. Specialist physicians have a persistent flood of patients who do not need a specialist’s care, but seek the specialist because there is no general physician available.
Moreover, the office visit length will be shortened due to the high demand of customers making it harder to provide good quality of care to patients as well . On the other hand, from the physician point of view it is predictable that doctors will change practice patterns from private offices to hospital services because the facilities pay salaries with less expectations in the number of patients seen per day. Furthermore, due to the elevated number of patients, time left for clinical documentation and record keeping will be nulle.
There are many factors to why appointments are delayed or re-scheduled that are beyond the structuring of time, however, there are some ideas that can help ease the annoyance of having to wait. The best thing to address is making sure the patient feels comfortable. Keep people abreast of the wait time and what’s going on. People understand things happen. However, they don’t want to feel forgotten. Some doctor’s offices have grasped the ideas of distraction, provide TV with news and valuable information, brochures and literature read, even hiring nurses or
The office would need to establish a goal to accommodate all post-discharge patients. When appointments cannot be made then an escalation process to the office manager needs to occur. In order to foster communication with professional partners, an investigation of the system failures. How can the transition to home be improved? The workflow should include a validation step that would entail hand-off communication between hospital rounders and office schedulers. If missteps occur, then the office staff could catch the near misses and call the patient at home. Care coordination among providers on an outpatient basis could be supported by the electronic medical record and having verbal care conferences. Next strategy could involve the hospital completing a call back within twenty-four hours to all patients discharged. This intervention could potentially catch some of the missed opportunities. Another approach involves face to face reinforcement of the patient-centered partnership with H. H. According to Counsil et al. (2012), “patient-centered care plans for complex patients changed the relationships with the health team” (p. 190). The development of this patient directed plan of care and partnership is
One reason some offices run continuously late is the doctor trys to see to many patients on a given day.Moreso, when this happens the payient dosen’t get the attention thay require from the physician.Running patient through
The finding of the survey exposed that an important factor of administrative complication was probably due to the number of different contracts a physician was in agreements with. The question was
During the second week, I had the opportunity to accompany Mr. Price to meetings that he had with the managers of the nurses and schedulers. During those meetings, the managers discussed the ideal approach of how to accommodate patients who call the schedulers to acquire appointments for urgent medical concerns. There seemed to be a problem with patients taking up appointment slots when they do not have a true need to be assessed by their doctor. It was ultimately concluded that the schedulers would coordinate communication between the patient and the registered nurse. The nurse would then triage the patient’s concerns over the phone and provide medical guidance,
staff the emergency room operated by the Plaintiff at its hospital facility as evidenced by the on call schedules maintained by the Plaintiff beginning in October of 2011.
Another way to alleviate the overcrowded schedule is by making patient appointments for every other time slot. If a patient calls in for an
A call came at 10 saying that there was no need for an additional doctor yet because of how slow the emergency room was that day. We were eventually told to come in at 12:00 though, but the fact that the amount of time you're made to work directly correlates to how busy the E.R. is was a weird concept to me. The way the emergency room is laid out is with a central station of desks with a wall separating the two haves. Surrounding the desks are the patients room. As a doctor, you simply wait until a patient is set up in a room by nurses and then claim the patient in the system. Each patient has a description of their pain complaint in the computer along with a ranked emergency level. After claiming the patient, the doctor go to see them in there room. When a Doctor visits a patients room, they do exactly what one thinks they would do— they ask questions. It was interesting to note how differently my father and Dr. James went about these interviews. Dr. James was more of a talking, “why don't you tell me what the issue is” kind of doctor. She let the patients talk but gently guided the conversations. She was very nice and would explain exactly what she meant in basic, social terms. On the other hand, my father was computer-like efficient in his investigation. He would always ask the same set of specific questions in each case no matter what the problem was. He would always be the one in charge and almost a bit callus in his method. That’s not to say
According to the survey, our patients didn’t enjoy their experience before their appointment. 73% of patients said that the receptionist did not greet them immediately. I know this was the case when I walked in for my meeting. The receptionist was on her phone texting instead of being aware of patients that could potentially be walking into the facility. Although the receptionist doesn’t greet them right away, 67% of people agree she was respectful and courteous. However, the biggest issue lies with patients not understanding the co-pay and possibility of additional costs. This is a problem that can be fixed easily, we just need to retrain our receptionists to greet each patient with a warm smile, and how to fully explain the costs that patients are required to pay. The receptionist play an important role in customer service, therefore they must be at the top of their game at all times. In order to fix the overall patient experience at our urgent care facility, I think we need to send out more surveys and bring back the follow-up calls. The follow up calls are important because patients will be able to express any concerns they had with their visit and we would be able to
“Did-Not-Attends” (DNAs) occur when a patient unexpectedly without notifying the radiology department fails to attend an appointment (Hallsworth et al., 2015). DNAs lead to worse care for patients by delaying in diagnosis and appropriate treatment for the non-attending patient (Gurol-Urganci et al., 2013). Also, DNAs results in wasted resources, disturbs the planned work schedules which leads to frustration for both staff and patients, and increased in the waiting time for appointments (Hasvold and Wootton, 2011). Hospitals may also engage in complex compensating behaviors, such as overbooking, which introduce problems of their own (Hallsworth et al., 2015).
Several existing problems precipitated the creation of the triage system implemented by Kathryn Angell in an effort to deliver improved medical care. The main problem was a lack of coordination in service delivery. This lack of coordination caused excessive wait times on the order of anywhere from 23 to 40 minutes to see a nurse, 40 to 50 minutes to see a doctor, and as long as 55 minutes to get a prescription filled. The practice of all nurses being involved initially in seeing all patients caused duplication of efforts, including repeating questions and examinations, and resulted in procedural bottlenecks. Additionally, there were inconsistent levels of service and extreme variation in treatment because of the different experience
Upon arrival a patient should have been made aware about a delay therefore he/she would not get inpatient. The appointment itself should not be rushed. A health proffessional should have explained everything in a clear and precise manner giving patient the opportunity to voice any concern or ask any additional questions. In regards to the appointment itself, the
Emergency department information systems have been defined as “electronic health record systems designed specifically to manage data and workflow in support/help of ED patient care and operations.” A detailed profile for EDIS outlines hundreds of essential functions of an EDIS, including clinical workflow, registration, patient tracking, orders, clinical documentation, discharge management, and administrative support. Whereas, no standardized definitions or required features have been presently established for EDIS. Feature-based classification based on EDIS experience, combined with literature that identified important features of EDIS from