By Sara Heath
- Healthcare organizations working to enable post-pandemic patient access to care may consider a number of operational overhauls and revamping time-tested engagement strategies, according to a report from the Medical Group Management Association.
The onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic push healthcare organizations across the country to shutter their doors to non-urgent and non-emergency healthcare access. This move, which intended to cut down on patient volume, reserve resources for the surge in coronavirus cases, and protect patients and staff, also harmed business for clinics in the US.
But now organizations are able to reopen, creating an opportunity to recoup lost revenue and meet patient healthcare needs. In June, 57 percent of patients said they had healthcare needs that needed immediate attention, and organizations were poised to do just that.
But reopening a healthcare facility while the nation is still reeling from a deadly viral pandemic is no easy task. In July, most healthcare leaders (87 percent) agreed that safety was the top reason patients deferred care during the pandemic, and will be integral to gaining patient trust to come back into the office for treatment.
“Through this period of uncertainty and anxiety during a global pandemic, patients still need care,” Halee Fischer-Wright, MD, MMM, FAAP, FACMPE, and MGMA’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
READ MORE: Open for Business: Rebuilding Patient Trust to Reopen Healthcare
“One of the keys to restoring patient visit volumes and avoiding deferred care is ensuring that these patients feel safe when returning to their medical practice office. Medical practices need to win patients’ trust and this benchmarking data will allow medical practices to make necessary adjustments that will allow them to remain competitive in this ever-evolving industry.”
In addition to deploying cleaning protocol and other patient safety measures, healthcare organizations may consider a number of operational changes that will make it easier for them to comply with social distancing recommendations, MGMA advised.
Expanding operating hours
Central to keeping patients safe — and making them feel safe — will be allowing both patients and providers to maintain adequate distance from one another. This will require healthcare organizations to keep clinic volumes down at a given moment in time, and will therefore call for expanded operating hours.
Prior to the pandemic, most clinician offices were open for about nine hours each day during the business week.
Organizations may contemplate keeping their doors open for more hours during the day, or having some weekend hours. This will help organizations spread out patient appointment times, stagger staff, and keep more efficient schedules.
Limiting patient wait times
READ MORE: Was COVID-19 Healthcare’s Use Case for the Patient Portal?
Appointment wait times can pose a significant challenge to healthcare organizations. Previous research has suggested that long patient wait times, or the time between a patient entering a facility and actually seeing their clinician in the exam room, can be detrimental to a good patient experience.
According to 2019 MGMA figures, waiting room times for primary care specialists increased from 10 to 14 minutes. Adding in the time a patient waits for her clinician in the exam room, patients can wait up to a total of between 20 and 25 minutes before she receives care.
But organizations are going to want to keep patients out of the waiting room in an effort to keep social distance and reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, the MGMA report authors said.
Organizations may tap electronic check-in and ask patients to wait in their cars instead of the waiting room, the authors suggested. Processes that make it easier for patients to get some pre-visit work done may also help ease patient flow challenges.
“Many practices should consider shifting to a ‘pull’ model of appointments that’s more patient friendly, so that patients can go directly to areas for upstream work that needs to be done prior to visiting with a provider (e.g., imaging, workup, lab draws) and move along to see a provider thereafter,” the report authors said, referencing guidance from MGMA consultant Adrienne Lloyd, MHA, FACHE, chief administrative officer, Duke Eye Center, Duke Medical Center. “This approach helps to avoid patient bottlenecks in the facility, which helps maintain social distancing protocols.”
Managing appointment availability
READ MORE: How Banner Health Redefined Patient Experience with Patient Safety
In addition to reducing the wait patients face when they get to the clinic, organizations are going to want to manage appointment availability. In other words, organizations need to assess the waiting period between requesting an appointment and actually getting that appointment on the books.
To be clear, all clinics aim to get patients an appointment when the patient truly needs it, and it was this way before the pandemic. However, COVID-19 has made that process even more challenging, especially during the reopening process.
Some medical appointments will be more urgent because of the virus — appointments for individuals displaying symptoms, for example. Meanwhile, the reopening process could leave organizations liable to bottlenecks.
Organizations should consider using a wait list and tracking the delays patients face between requesting an appointment and when that appointment actually occurs.
“Depending on specialty, practices may want to consider the highest-priority issues and which patients may have potential for adverse outcomes from delays in care related to COVID-19 shutdowns in recent months,” the report authors advised.
Leveraging the patient portal
At the end of the day, one of the best solutions to managing clinic volume and keeping patients safe is keeping them out of the office when necessary. This can be accomplished using telehealth technology and other tools, like the patient portal.
“With news and government action in response to COVID-19 developing so rapidly, patients and providers can feel overwhelmed by the pace of change,” the report authors said. “Your practice’s patient portal is one tool in bridging the gap caused by stay-at-home orders.”
Patients largely use the portal for prescription refill requests, secure direct messaging, and looking at lab results. These are all solutions to different problems that could bring the patient into the clinic: a needed prescription refill, a nagging healthcare question, or results from a COVID-19 test.
But if an organization pushes the patient portal harder, a patient could ask a question of her provider, for example, without having to come in for an in-person appointment.
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October 13, 2020
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