Walk-In Clinic Case Summary

Retailing choices – Patients have several choices to receive services, through the hospital, a clinic visit, and now the minute clinic. Mayo has two Minute clinics’ that are a walk-in center and are used to assess and treat minor conditions, and monitor chronic conditions of patients and no appointment is required. The wait time is usually less than 15 minutes. (Keckley, Ph.D., P. H., 2008).

Healthcare is in a constant state of change with movements that impact rates, access and quality of care. Hospitals have become more competitive due to the rising cost of care delivery and the reduction in reimbursement from payers. This causes difficulty in delivering quality care to all patients, which is being measured by mandated patient perception surveys, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). HCAHPS scores are part of value

The implications and effects on patients waiting long hours to be seen in the ED are immense. In a recent study done over five years in Ontario hospitals showed the risk of adverse events and even deaths increased with the length of stay in the ED (Science Daily, 2011). When EDs become overcrowded the quality of care changes and declines; which is extremely dangerous. Authors of the study calculated that if ED length of stay was cut by only an hour that 150 fewer Ontarians would die each year (Science Daily, 2011). Wait times can also negatively affect patients financially, untreated medical conditions can lead to reduced productivity and inability to work leading to increased financial strains (Fraser Institute, 2014). As well as delayed access to care can result in more complex interventions needed. Therefore an initiative is needed to provide patients with timely, efficient care when accessing

No, it did not improve the process. The new triage did not meet the intended goals of off-loading patients to NPs and the overall throughput time did not change.

It is easy to understand the rushed appointments. Physicians regularly see close to 20 patients per day. Furthermore, the medical model focuses primarily on diagnosing and treating the illness at hand, at the expense of seeing the whole clinical picture. This often leads to frustration and decreased motivation to seek follow-up care.

Another secondary issue is the weakened employee expectations and employee performance, which adversely affects good patient care as well. The person in charge of patient registration is unprofessional to staff and patients. The facility is not clean because maintenance is slow in performing assigned duties. The parking is unsafe and unattended. The staff lacks the motivation to perform well.

It is not a good to keep your patients waiting to see you. That wait time should not be more than ten minutes but more than likely, it should not be more than seven minutes. The reason for the shorter wait time is that when your patients come to see you is, because do not feel well, and the longer they wait the more uncomfortable they feel. When they are uncomfortable and annoyed because they were kept waiting they take it out on the staff and even the physician. Everyone realizes that Doctors get patients that come and they are sicker than they thought, so when this happens someone should come

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

I feel that Medical Assistant as well as Nurse’s need to understand where exactly the patient is coming from as far as wait times for patients. The patients have to wait in the waiting room and then be placed in a room to wait just as long as the waiting room. So, I don’t think it is fair to have people waiting hours to see the doctor. I think if we give the tablets to the patients in their waiting room they will be able to take a survey while they wait in the room. I think the physicians should know how long patients have to wait to be seen. I think the staff should have a meeting including the physicians to see how they can better

As a tactical response to the regional deficit of primary care providers and a marked stressing of local emergency departments along with urgent care facility resource overburden, Alpha Centauri has been developed from the ground-up as a premier walk-in healthcare entity in Elk County, Pennsylvania. We endeavor to provide quality healthcare in the vein of three key specializations necessary in our region: orthopedics, gastroenterology, and pediatrics. These specialties are often the most sought out after residential patients are referred from local urgent care and emergency departments, and our primary goal is to deliver these vital services to our patients without delay, and prioritize the care needed without the potential of degenerating conditions caused by the inability of local health systems to deliver this care in a timely manner. The initial vision and groundwork is what will become three separate walk-in clinics based on our current specialization capacities, the first and primary of which will be made ready for clientele on February 15th, 2017.

In Kennedy Medical Center it is the tradition to divert the ambulatory services the moment the patient in-take becomes high. However, this decision is an unethical way of managing the increased number of patients who are in need of services but for the staff members of this facility lead by Ms. Downs, this was the normal process. Over the past 25 years Kennedy Medical Center have made minimal changes with redundancy and the wait time for services within the emergency department. Dr. Grant faces several challenges in his mission of branding the hospital a new name by making it his goal that all patients are in and out within a four-hour time span, while having the emergency department be on divert once a month instead of each time it becomes

Time at Out-Patient Clinic has used analysis of VSM, PDCA, Kaizen, 5 Why’s techniques and team brainstorming. Tools includes tree diagram and fishbone were also used. Once, the waiting time for doctor’s consultancy is shorter, indirectly the waiting time for overall process in the Out-Patient Clinic reduce. In the analysis part, several questions need to be addressed with the main question on why patients need to wait long. It is in this part where issues are determined such as the distance of the stat specimens to the hospital’s main laboratory, miscellaneous tasks, incorrect order submission, unnecessary activities during critical business hours and the proper utilization of tools and workstations to accommodate all the needs of the patients

Now that we have a sense of what needs to be addressed and how we will address it we will have to look at the designation of tasks to staff and the support of our management to insure that the plan of action is being taken to its highest ability. Regular calendars will be assigned to two people and the physicians will be divided among them evenly. We will have the emergency calendar handled by the charge nurse as previously discussed. We will change the time frame of our appointments and start using the categorize system in the upcoming month. We will also generate a list of clients with insurance information and request medical coverage to have on hand for physicians.

In order to alleviate the long wait times, the clinic either needs to hire more physicians at an additional cost of $55,000 each, or the clinic needs to find ways to increase the utilization of the nurse practitioners to reduce the burden carried by the physicians. In light of the comparatively high cost of hiring physicians as compared with the cost of increasing the utilization of the nurse practitioners, we recommend taking the following steps instead of simply hiring additional physicians.

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