It can be confusing for patients to know when, where and how to receive care. To help your patients, you need to have a clearly defined patient access and intake strategy.
Of course, these are two different sides of the same issue. Access is about the availability of physicians, scheduling optimization, and slot utilization. Intake focuses on the operational element in place that allows patients, caregivers, and others to enter the organization.
Look, creating an overall strategy for this issue is a lot to take on. It’s a huge project, we know. But it’s so important to have a long-term vision, and taking steps now to excel at access and intake will improve an organization across the board.
And though it’s a big project, it doesn’t have to be painful. Creating an overall strategy in the beginning puts the guidelines in place to have difficult conversations and makes hard decisions between clinical and business leadership easier. If everyone agreed on the strategy as the first step, the collaboration is then in place to move forward.
Then, bring in leadership from across the enterprise as early as possible to stress the importance of an excellent patient access and intake strategy. Set the vision in a way that others can catch fire and feel a part of it. Singola’s own process to facilitate this is to examine your current state and then leverage your own existing, internal resources to find success. Partnering with Human Resources, or Talent Acquisition, or Marketing allows for buy-in, knowledge transfer, and means we’re not reinventing the wheel. When everyone owns the project, we can move past the work your organization already does well and instead focus on those areas that need improvement.
Like we said, building a patient access and intake strategy isn’t going to be easy. But start by communicating throughout the organization that change is coming, then emphasize that the change is going to be strategic so that all the time and energy from your staff result in measurable and actionable improvements, and ultimately, a better patient experience.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.