Research Day
Document Type
Abstract
Date
2017
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires every family medicine residency program to have a practice site that supports, “continuous, comprehensive, convenient, accessible, and coordinated patient care”. The WMed Family Medicine Resident Clinic (Team Oakland), located within the Family Health Center (FHC) – Paterson location, has long been plagued by scheduling difficulties, as evidenced by high no-show rates, empty appointment slots, and frequent cancellations threatening the ability of our residents to achieve the required number of outpatient visits mandated by the Family Medicine Residency Review Committee (RRC) and the requirement for continuity from the ACGME. We believe many of these issues arise from the FHC’s open-access scheduling template, which heavily favors same day and walk in visits. PURPOSE: This quality improvement project aims to assess the productivity of the Western Michigan Family Medicine Clinic through a scheduling analysis to determine how we can better meet the needs of our patients while also meeting the visit numbers required of the RRC for our residents. STUDY DESIGN: This study is a retrospective scheduling analysis in which our no show rate and unfilled appointments will be considered. Scheduling data for Team Oakland was collected from December 1st, 2016 to January 31st, 2017 through customizable EPIC reports. RESULTS: Data shown below exhibits the total number of appointment slots for Team Oakland broken down by the number of appoints filled, unfilled appointment slots and no show appointments. Data was subsequently broken down by day of the week and hour of the day. The fill rate for the 8:00 hour is 51% compared to 80-90% for most other hours. Image Table 1. Scheduling data for Team Oakland December 2016 through January 2017 DISCUSSION: Literature review revealed conflicting evidence in support of open-access scheduling. We found limited alternative scheduling approaches and limited data specific to residency clinic productivity. Data analysis confirmed that we have a high proportion of appointments that go unfilled as well as a significant no-show rate. Proposed changes to the scheduling template include increasing the number of advanced scheduled appointments-particularly during early morning hours, obtaining an independent scheduler for the resident clinic, and a novel scheduling model targeted at filling no-show appointments with walk-in patients. CONCLUSION: The current scheduling model used at the FHC does not adequately meet the needs of the Family Medicine Residency clinic and data-driven alternative scheduling models should be explored.