Interventions Improve Efficiency and Reduce Patient Visit Duration in a Retina Practice
abstract
This abstract is available on the publisher's site.
Access this abstract nowPURPOSE
To reduce the total clinic visit duration among retina providers in an academic ophthalmology department.
METHODS
All patient encounters across all providers in the department were analyzed to determine baseline clinic visit duration time, defined as the elapsed time between appointment time and checkout. To increase photography capacity, a major bottleneck identified through root cause analysis, four interventions were implemented: training ophthalmic technicians to perform fundus photography in addition to OCTs, relocating photography equipment to be adjacent to exam rooms, procuring three additional Optos widefield retinal photography units, and shifting staff schedules to better align with that of the providers. These interventions were implemented in the clinics of two retina providers.
RESULTS
The average baseline visit duration for all patients across all providers was 87 minutes (19550 patient visits). The prior the average visit duration was 80 minutes for provider 1 (557 patient visits) and 81 minutes for provider 2 (1246 patient visits). In the four weeks after interventions were implemented, the average visit duration decreased to 60 minutes for provider 1 and 57 minutes for provider 2.
CONCLUSIONS
A systematic approach and a multi-disciplinary team resulted in targeted, cost-effective interventions that reduced total visit durations.
Click on any of these tags to subscribe to Topic Alerts. Once subscribed, you can get a single, daily email any time PracticeUpdate publishes content on the topics that interest you.
Visit your Preferences and Settings section to Manage All Topic Alerts
Additional Info
Disclosure statements are available on the authors' profiles:
Successful Interventions to Improve Efficiency and Reduce Patient Visit Duration in a Retina Practice
Retina (Philadelphia, Pa.) 2021 Mar 18;[EPub Ahead of Print], CC Lin, AS Li, H Ma, X Lin, MZ Olivares, A Haubrich, S Sanislo, DV DoFrom MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
The authors evaluated "four targeted interventions" aimed at "improved clinic efficiency by reducing the clinic visit durations of two retina providers at an academic ophthalmology department." The target of the study was increasing photography capacity. Specific interventions evaluated were: "...: training ophthalmic technicians to perform fundus photography in addition to OCTs, relocating photography equipment to be adjacent to exam rooms, procuring three additional Optos widefield retinal photography units, and shifting staff schedules to better align with that of the providers." A root cause analysis and process mapping based on data from a survey instrument was used for the study. The bottleneck identified was in photography. After 4 weeks, the interventions decreased the average visit duration from 80 minutes to approximately 60 minutes. The authors conclude that, "A systematic approach and a multi-disciplinary team resulted in targeted, cost-effective interventions that reduced total visit durations." Overall, the study may have applications to private as well as academic clinic settings.