See how West County Health Centers, a LEAP site, routes different types of communications coming into the practice. This tool is also described in the webinar, also available in action step 1 of this topic.
West County Health Centers share their protocol for RN daily triage of abnormal labs, which is used to assure that critically abnormal labs are dealt with the same day. Guidance is also provided for examples of lab or imaging that does not require expedited action by clinical staff.
This one-page flow sheet from Vibrant Health Family Clinics lays out the steps needed for three common categories of calls to streamline their handling and assure consistency.
See this workflow used to manage the clinicians' flow of work throughout the day at one LEAP site. This will prevent batching work until the end of the day and provide a more timely response to patient needs .
Call Routing Hierarchy & Rings of Defense, Job Aid
This job aid from Group Health Cooperative in Washington state describes the hierarchy order used by the automated phone system to look for the appropriate team member who is understood by the system to be logged in and available. It describes the queueing process and both what is seen by staff on the phone lights, as well as what options the patient is given at each step.
Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
Workflow
Improving Patient Care: Are irrational office procedures contributing to your phone problem?
This article describes common problems encountered in a practice's phone system. You can download a phone call tracking tool to help you identify issues and track improvement. Woodcock EW. Getting a grip on your phone calls. Fam Pract Manag. 2002. Sep;9(8):53-4. PubMed PMID: 12375477.
Here is an example of medical renewal guidelines from LEAP site Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene. These guidelines allow team members to identify the need for patient lab work or visits before processing incoming medication renewal requests. The guidelines were developed with provider input so that non-provider team members could safely and efficiently process renewals for a wide class of medications, as indicated in this document.
This one-page Work Sheet lays out the standard process for patient checkout at Harvard Vanguard Atrius Health, including proactively looking to book follow-up visits and referrals to outside providers.
