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This paper has to be formatted with the attached Innovation Proposal Form, using the following scenario and guidelines.
Scenario
The Affordable Care Act has increased healthcare access to a large population base. As a result, there has been an increase in the number of patients seen by primary care doctors. Tensions are mounting in the primary care clinics of your medical group. Long wait times have brought patient satisfaction to an all-time low and stress levels to an all-time high. As the administrator of your medical group, you are charged with developing a technology innovation to reduce wait times and restore patient satisfaction before your medical group experiences a heavy loss of revenue.
The following groups should be your main focus:
• Physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners: These members of the team are all being rated low, which results in loss of professional prestige and income through either bonuses or third-party payers.
• Front and back office staff (i.e., medical assistants and receptionists): These staff members engage with the patients first and are getting significant complaints. The intensified stress of the job is increasing the likelihood of a negative care incident through ineffective triage, increased staff dissatisfaction, and practitioner oversight concerns. Staff morale is suffering, and some employees are considering leaving the clinics.
• Patients: During the last six months, patient flow has increased 10%, and new patient scheduling is trending upward for four of the six months. New patient appointments are 45 days out for specialists and 10 days for primary care physicians. Established patients cannot schedule for the times they would like and have to take time off from work or other commitments. Scheduling for these patients is four days out for a primary care physician and 15 days for a specialist. Patient wait time is an average of 25 minutes from check-in for the waiting room and 10 minutes in the clinic room. Checkout averages seven minutes. Interoffice phlebotomist wait times average four minutes.
The following factors may be influencing wait times and patient satisfaction:
• ineffective procedures and policies for scheduling
• ineffective communication skills in personnel
• no protocols for when staff call in ill or are unable to work
• no formal training to assist staff in handling increased patient volume
The following times are when the issues are most prevalent:
• Peak times for adult patients are after 4:00 p.m. and prior to 9:00 a.m. due to working patients.
• Peak times for pediatrics are in the morning and in the early afternoon after school.
• Office lunch, between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., reduces staff and increases call times.
• Monday mornings have an increase in patient volume since the clinic is only open on weekdays.
The following information describes current scheduling factors in your medical group:
• Patients check in at the front desk and wait in the waiting room until a medical assistant (MA) brings them back into a free treatment room.
• Providers do not have a system to know the order of patients without asking an MA.
• Providers have rooms solely assigned to them, with some underutilized and others overburdened.
• Providers complete charting in between seeing patients.
• One-third of providers have surgical or hospital patients at a local hospital 30 minutes away.
• Half of the providers are on staff or on call at the hospital.
• Scheduling is done only via phone and the main line. There is one receptionist per three practitioners.
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