Advancing Primary Care Access: Exploring the Impact of the Virtual Waiting Room on the Quadruple Aim.

BACKGROUND: Community health centers grapple with high no-show rates, posing challenges to patient access and primary care provider (PCP) utilization. AIM: To address these challenges, we implemented a virtual waiting room (VWR) program in April 2023 to enhance patient access and boost PCP utilization. SETTING: Academic community health center in a small urban city in Massachusetts. PARTICIPANTS: Community health patients (n = 8706) and PCP (n = 14). PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: The VWR program, initiated in April 2023, involved nurse triage of same-day visit requests for telehealth appropriateness, then placing patients in a standby pool to fill in as a telehealth visit for no-shows or last-minute cancellations in PCP schedules. PROGRAM EVALUATION: Post-implementation, clinic utilization rates between July and September improved from 75.2% in 2022 to 81.2% in 2023 (p < 0.01). PCP feedback was universally positive. Patients experienced a mean wait time of 1.9 h, offering a timely and convenient alternative to urgent care or the ER. DISCUSSION: The VWR is aligned with the quadruple aim of improving patient experience, population health, cost-effectiveness, and PCP satisfaction through improving same-day access and improving PCP schedule utilization. This innovative and reproducible approach in outpatient offices utilizing telehealth holds the potential for enhancing timely access across various medical disciplines.

Why Residencies Should Fly: Towards a Logical Approach to Duty Hour Reform.

Since 2011, aviation has revolutionized their approach to safety. The aviation industry has adopted a multi-faceted approach to improve safety through decreasing duty hour limits and implementing processes to mitigate fatigue-related errors as well as creating cultural shifts in responsibility for safety. These changes have been guided by data generated by quality-improvement methodology. In contrast, duty hour limits in graduate medical education have not yet seen dramatic data-driven reform. Key advancements in aviation fatigue mitigation and implications for residency education are explored in this article. Scientifically based processes to optimize duty hours, quality-improvement strategies to iteratively monitor and reform duty limits, systematic change focusing on a just culture, and financial disincentives and incentives as a catalyst for change are discussed.