Same/next day appointments or Reasonable wait for appointment – Potential actions related to processes of care

Updated as of January 22, 2016 Assuming you have established that the data are good enough to direct action AND that improving performance in this area is a priority for your team, you may wish to discuss the following options with your clinical leaders, Quality Improvement committees, team staff and/or patients:

• Get more current data to move beyond the idea that “the data are too old to make improvements” OR test out a new question that wasn’t previously included in your survey
  • Step 1: Work with a physician who is interested in improving patient experience or work through your ED to get the conversation started with your team’s Med Lead
  • Step 2: Suggest tracking patient experience for a small subset of patients (i.e. the next 10 patients that come in) or for a narrowly defined timeframe (i.e. whatever you get in the next 2 weeks).
  • Step 3: Have a look at the data to see how this current “snapshot” compares to the “old” data
  • Step 4: Take this opportunity to discuss sample size – see resources on web (i.e. you do NOT need hundreds of surveys to know how your patients are feeling and to start making improvements)
  • Step 5: Consider setting up a frequent, ongoing automated patient experience survey process (See Data Quality Actions – how to increase quality of the data using new tools to capture and track patient experience data)
• Consult these tools to help improve access and efficiency in your team
  • Join machealth – an HQO supported group that works on Advanced Access and Efficiency for Primary Care : review the online modules to better understand the concepts of Access and Efficiency and how to guide improvement efforts and implement sustainable changes in your team.
  • Access similar resources available through HQO`s Learning Community for Advanced Access and Efficiency for Primary Care
• Check out how your peers are doing by looking at the D2D report to determine their performance with access and connect with them to either spread any processes they find helpful or collaboratively test some new changes that might work for you AND your peers.
• Check out what your peers are doing to improve their patients’ experience of care
  • Presentations from past AFHTO conference :
    • Engaging Patients in Their Care (AFHTO 2014)
    • Clinical Innovations in comprehensive primary care (AFHTO 2014)
    • Improving Patient’s Experience of Care (AFHTO 2012)