How a Texas radiology department dropped wait times for one procedure by 22%
A few years ago, University of Texas-Southwestern Medical Center was struggling to address bottlenecks, with patients waiting 27 days for one type of procedure. But radiologists at the Dallas-based institution have been able to drop that number by 22% while also boosting procedures completed.
UT Southwestern was able to vastly improve throughput for the placement of infusion ports with two quick changes in its electronic medical record, experts detailed Wednesday in Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology. The issue was particularly urgent, given concerns about keeping patients waiting for chemotherapy, which could reduce survival rates.
Building changes into the scheduling system while working closely with referring clinicians were both essential to reducing bottlenecks, advised Joseph McDevitt, MD, MBA, and colleagues. Long wait times had some docs considering looking elsewhere for referrals, but engaging them to address the problem proved fruitful.
“The fact that volumes of referred ports continue to increase throughout the project is evidence of the satisfaction of the referring services,” McDevitt—a former rad resident who now works with the Boston Consulting Group in D.C.—and colleagues wrote Sept. 2.
It was back in 2017 that UT Southwestern saw wait times for the placement of ports in interventional radiology nearly double, up to 27 days, over a four-month span. After conducting a root-cause analysis to pinpoint the problem, the team found two drivers: inadequate provider capacity for pre-procedural visits in the IR clinic and not enough slots for port placement on the angiography schedule. To remedy these issues, McDevitt et al. added two extra appointment slots per day for the former and reserved three more in the angiography suite.
The team looked to hardwire the changes by modifying the electronic clinic scheduling template. The additional appointment blocks could only be released if they sat unused for two days prior to the date.
These small changes seem to have paid off in a big way. Following the intervention, port requests swelled by 17% and completed clinic visits leapt 19%. And even with marked volume increases, the average wait time from request to placement slid 22%. Despite the wins, the UT team is now seeking further ways to improve the patient experience, including stratifying by procedure urgency.
“Additionally, implementation of app-based scheduling and reminders could make scheduling more patient-centric and more easily reach patients to confirm appointments, further reducing delays due to no-shows and rescheduling,” the authors noted.
Read more on their successes in Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.