A customer- and business-driven healthcare access model

Whether centralised or decentralised, healthcare access models provide varying degrees of benefit to customers and to the organisations they serve. Mayo Clinic Health System in Southwest Minnesota, United States, is a community-based practice of 23 clinics and 6 hospitals that has undergone an evolution of its access model. In 2010, a centralised access model was adopted, including the physical location of schedulers, which was expected to offer greater efficiency, flexibility and staff savings. However, in 2016, the region noted concerning trends of low patient and provider satisfaction with scheduling, decreasing patient access and less-than-optimal patient throughput, all subsequently contributing to declining financial performance. Early concerning trends led to further investigation of practice areas and geographical sites that had notable appointment capacity yet low patient access and throughput. Provider productivity rates, calendar management and patient access varied substantially. Performance in scheduling operations was below par because of limited connection with the practice. The combination of practice variation and a centralised access model was causing an increase in scheduling errors, consistent rework/rescheduling, less-than-optimal patient access, low provider calendar fill rates and high levels of dissatisfaction for patients and providers. Our group was tasked with analysing the problems and developing a new scheduling model. This paper describes the resulting model: a hybrid of centralised and decentralised models, which promised the benefits of both and involved transformation in clinical practice operations and access management. Standardisation for provider scheduling and template management was enhanced. Pods of scheduling personnel were embedded in practice areas. The proximity of the pods to physician, nursing and other clinical staff allowed for increased collaboration and communication. The hybrid model improved access metrics for average speed to answer, abandoned call rates, patient access and throughput, financial performance, and patient and provider satisfaction.