The Patient Access Process Improvement (PAPI) plan is an initiative geared toward the creation of world-class patient and family-centered access when seeing a provider for a medical appointment within our outpatient settings.
This plan will be implemented in two major roll-outs known as “pathways” with three phases to make the process of creating an appointment faster, easier and more accurate for our patients.
Pathway I (Protocol Optimization):
- Phase 1 (Cadence Optimization) specifically helps improve appointment accuracy.
- Phase 2 (Cross Department Scheduling) allows departments to quickly schedule patients’ next appointment at the point of check out.
- Phase 3 (Patient Direct Scheduling) empowers patients to schedule their appointments through an easy electronic feature called MyChart.
Pathway II (Best Practice Implementation) monitors data and metrics to ensure that we are harmonizing processes across the institution.
Measures around appointment scheduling and capacity management include, but are not limited to:
- The length of appointments
- When a provider is available to see a new patient
Measures around operations and quality include, but are not limited to:
- The reason for and rate of cancellations
- The availability to see in-state and out-of-state patients
As we undergo these processes we continue to be mindful of areas of opportunity and ways in which we can sustain our success. Thus far we can proudly say that this plan has ensured our patients are seeing the right provider at the right place at the right time…ultimately improving patient satisfaction!
-Darren Brownlee, Assistant Administrator for Ambulatory & Access Operations
