Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access Getting to Now (2015) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Improving Health Care Scheduling
1 Improving Health Care Scheduling
Pages 7-16
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From page 7... ...
The culture, technology, and financial incentives at work in health care have only recently begun to heighten awareness and attention to the issue that delays are often not the result of resource limitations but more commonly are the product of flawed approaches to the scheduling process and poor use of the full range of available resources. Although prompted by attention to a high-profile crisis in a health center operated by the Veterans Health Administration of the Department 7
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From page 8... ...
The interim report from that audit confirmed that the Phoenix Health Care System had been falsely reporting its scheduling queues and wait times. The audit found that 1,700 veterans in need of a primary care appointment had been left off the mandatory electronic waiting list (EWL)
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From page 9... ...
In October 2014, the VA/VHA established the Veterans Choice Program in accordance with Section 101 of the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act. The Choice Program addresses the VA/VHA wait time goals in such a way that veterans enrolled in VA/VHA health care will be provided clinically appropriate VA/VHA care within 30 days of making a request for medical services.
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From page 10... ...
Managed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) through a public–private initiative, the CAHPS program develops standardized, tested, and publicly available measurement tools of patient experiences with health care access and quality, as well as standardized and tested methods for collecting and analyzing survey data (Lake et al., 2005)
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From page 11... ...
. A study of wait times at VA facilities analyzed facility and individuallevel data of veterans visiting geriatric outpatient clinics, finding that longer wait times for outpatient care led to small yet statistically significant decreases in health care use and were related to poorer health in elderly and vulnerable veteran populations (Prentice and Pizer, 2007)
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From page 12... ...
. However, because primary care providers can act as the gatekeepers for mental health care, patients face an even longer delay for mental health services because of the need to first get a primary care appointment.
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From page 13... ...
, numerous conference calls, and directed staff work to assemble the evidence and identify exemplary practices. Primary attention was given in this work to gathering and examining the available evidence documenting demonstrated practices for improving access, scheduling, and wait times in health care; learning from presentations by representatives of organizations deemed to have developed beneficial strategies for productive change; and identifying principles for best practices based on the experiences of those organizations.
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From page 14... ...
health care services, the committee looked at the VA/VHA, private and public providers, and other sectors. The scope of the committee's review covers first appointments and follow-up appointments for primary care, scheduling and wait times for hospital care, access to rehabilitation care, referrals to specialty care, and first appointments for mental health.
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From page 15... ...
Finally, Chapter 5 presents the committee's findings and recommendations for transforming access and scheduling in health care. A primary focus of the report is on primary care services, while laying the groundwork for improved access throughout other areas of the
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From page 16... ...
BOX 1-2 Patient- and Family-Centered Care Patient- and family-centered care is designed, with patient involvement, to ensure timely, convenient, well-coordinated engagement of a person's health and health care needs, preferences, and values; it includes explicit and partnered de termination of patient goals and care options; and it requires ongoing assessment of the care match with patient goals.
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