CASE STUDY
CLIENT: Hunterdon Medical Center Flemington, NJ
Integral resource utilization study executed for family practice wishing to eliminate their waiting room. Most practices are satisfied minimizing patient waiting before a scheduled appointment, but Hunterdon Medical Center hoped to eliminate their waiting room completely. While developing a workflow that focused on patients’ forward progress through the system, resource allocation and utilization became the catalysts of success. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Array’s work began with a current state mapping and visioning session to determine
SERVICE: Transformation
how the staff at the Hunterdon Medical Center work, and how they hoped to operate in
METHOD: Resource Utilization
the future. After these exercises, we collected data for two weeks, giving the team an idea of where bottlenecks occurred in the system. Providers expected resident appointments lasted longer due to the teaching involved,
Challenge
causing increased waiting times. However, data showed that attending physicians’
Providers were unsure why patient waiting times were so high in their practice and desired to make improvements by altering flow and adjusting resource allocations to match their daily appointment schedule.
appointments actually delayed appointments more often. Root cause analysis revealed that when attending physicians stepped out of the room to retrieve a patient’s paperwork for, they were called on for other small tasks that ultimately added time to their patient’s appointment. A multi-disciplinary team developed a new patient flow that focused on patient movement through the system. In the ideal state, patients arrive and check-in before a nurse takes them for a vitals assessment. Then, they move to an exam room, where they might receive immunizations before their physician comes in. As the team
Solution
designed the new process and put the transformation plan in place, we encouraged
Array designed a new process based on current state mapping and data collection, which revealed unexpected provider appointment durations. Using a simulation model, we were able to show the team which resources need to be in place to eliminate patient waiting before a scheduled appointment.
the staff to focus on ensuring all necessary resources were available for all staff, with the intention of eliminating the need for physicians to leave the exam room. Array developed a simulation model to help determine how many exam rooms, assessment spaces and check-in positions were necessary to sustain the new process with minimal patient waiting time. Staff provided feedback throughout the model creation, quickly recognizing it as a credible representation of their system. This allowed them to use the model as a decision-making tool to quantify the number of resources needed to support their new process.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
2
PROPOSED CHECK-IN KIOSKS
12
RESOURCE QUANTITY COMBINATIONS TESTED
10
%
TARGET VOLUME INCREASE