PPC-1 -- Access and Communication

Element A -- Access and Communication Processes

• Data Point 4 Maintaining the capacity to schedule patients the same day they call

Southeast Texas Medical Associates (SETMA) is committed to giving our patients a same-day appointment when needed or requested. Each provider’s schedule has the capability of adding double books and even on the busiest of days there is always excess capacity in case an additional appointment needs to be added.

Each primary care physician has two slots left blank so that urgent care and/or personal request for same-day appointments can be accommodated. SETMA tracks the patients who requested a same-day appointment and was or was not given one so that we can evaluate this function. We consistently perform very well on this measure.

To assure access via telephone triage, on a weekly basis, a series of reports are generated and sent to the supervisor of Appointments and Scheduling for review. These reports consist of the following:

• Total Staff Time (Amount of time logged onto phone system)
• Total Ready Time (Amount of time waiting for a call to come in)
• Total Ring Time (Amount of time the phone rings before answered)
• Total Talk Time (Amount of time spent talking on the phone)
• Average Talk Time (Average amount of time spent on phone per call)
• Total Hold Time (Amount of time the phone is put on hold)
• Total Work Time (Not used)
• Total Break Time (Amount of time the phone is put on break)
• Total Calls Answered (Number of calls answered)
• Total Calls Transferred (Number of calls that are transferred)

The following is a sample of the detail we track:

The data is then used to determine if each of our patients received a timely response, if there is a need for additional staff, or if there are any operational issues that would impact the ability for us to expedite the scheduling process.

In addition, we ask patients on our quarterly Patient Satisfaction reports how effectively we have met their scheduling needs as well as their level of satisfaction for any returned calls in which the immediate needs could not be met. These reports are then forwarded to the COO and other key management staff to review and make recommendations.

The following is SETMA’s patient satisfaction survey for the entire year of 2009:. Highlighted in red is the response to the patient’s perception of how easy it is to get an appointment with their SETMA provider. 93% state that their perception it good, very good or excellent with 51% stating that its is excellent. Only 3% consider it fair to poor.

Fourth Quarter 2009 Aggregate
All SETMA