P65A - Quick Sick - Is It for You?

The conference participant will hear from nurses who started and manage a family practice “quick sick clinic” as a way to relieve the predictable overflow requests of established patients needing urgent/acute sick appointments. Identify ways to position resources to meet the growing consumer demand for creative options for urgent or acute care visits in a primary care or family practice setting. This practice sees about 23,000 patients annually.

Concepts and themes communicated during this poster presentation include:
• In the beginning – major concepts: Adjusting the weekend clinic model and replacing it with a Monday-Friday early morning quick sick clinic meant evaluating current practice. The poster will address the essential elements that must be examined in any primary care/family medical practice seeking to increase access to care.
• Statistics necessary for successful analysis, as to why current state was NOT working
• Stakeholders: business consultant, lead physician champions, nursing, and office staff contributors
• Structures: see evolution from initial template to current structure for hours of operation, staffing ratios, and physical and chronological scheduling practices
• Semantics: defining and educating the practice clients and community on what quick sick is…and is not!

Surprises along the way: pitfalls to avoid
• Weekend staffing difficulties: reducing to Saturday only
• Staffing for business success: without overtime debt
• Intended customers vs. actual clients

Demonstrating measurable outcomes: graphed data for patient volumes and satisfaction
• See data that demonstrates increased volume of patients seen over time by adjusting staffing mix to predictable trends while the hours of operation stayed fixed. The data presented will correlate improvement in patient satisfaction with increased access to care.
• Graph showing increase in patient volume since August 2015 to present
• Graph showing increase in customer satisfaction
• Exemplars of making a difference by opening doors early, daily

Benefits to the practice: the business case for sustainability
• Less calls to triage and less patients to work into the weekday schedule
• Increase income, earn special incentives from insurance payers
• Keep whole-patient care and well and sick visits within the continuum of the practice
• Reduces need for follow-up calls post urgent care or ED visits for the quick sick patient
• Improves staff/provider satisfaction due to increase office efficiency

This presentation will offer concrete examples and sustained outcomes over time that will encourage conference attendees to re-think about whether their scheduling practices need a quick sick clinic and the tools and templates to start that conversation.