Providing our patients timely access to medical care is imperative to their wellness and it’s why UT Health Physicians' access initiative has long worked to streamline and increase access to our patient services. Our access initiative has been intensely focused on developing strategies, such as Early Arrival, Fast Pass and Practice-to-Practice scheduling, all aimed at helping our patients obtain appointments when they need them.
Overall at UT Health Physicians, new patients seen within 7 days are up 4%, slot utilization has increased 7% and the schedule referral work queue has decreased 45%. Additionally, new patients, completed visits and UT Select appointments from 2017 to 2018 increased 22%, 6%, and 23% respectively, than the corresponding time period a year earlier. And, despite this increase in access, clinic cycle time, which is defined as check out time minus check in time, has only increased by one minute, from 84 minutes to 85 minutes.
Soon, the access initiative will be rolling out an Adaptive Reserve Survey to get a snapshot of the clinical environment from the perspective of practice staff and providers. This 26-question, nationally-validated survey was developed by Carlos Jaen, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair of Family and Community Medicine, and is required by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality in studies of the Patient Centered Medical Home. This survey has been in use for several years by the Primary Care Center but was recently re-built in Qualtrics, tested in Ophthalmology and will be distributed within the next several weeks and then repeated quarterly. The survey takes only a few minutes to complete and will allow us to hasten the dialogues that will take us to the next level in patient care.
UT Health Physicians’ improved access will help all of us Make Lives Better® by improving the health of our community. A hearty Thank You goes to all of the practices, staff and providers for championing access on behalf of our patients and to UT Health's Practice Operations team and the Quality Team for hosting the Access Summit to educate our leaders in the importance of access.
