Tuesday, June 20, 2006

See the Doctor Without Long Wait

Amazing Single Piece Flow MD Office by Mark Graban:

This doctor re-thought the entire patient process, from the perspective of a patient. He was inspired to do this after he had a lousy experience being a patient for another physician.

Imagine this sort of experience as a patient:

* You show up for your appointment and walk to the counter. You say "I'm here" and don't have to sign in or do anything.
* You are immediately walked to your exam room where an assistant takes basic information and enters it directly in their Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that's right there in front of you.
* On average, 63 seconds (SECONDS!) later, the MD comes in and sees you. The MD sees the information that the assistant took down so you don't have to repeat yourself. While talking, the MD takes notes directly into the EHR (while not really losing eye contact from you).


Now that is impressive. I can only hope for such treatment. I rarely have had to use our health care system. But the last time I did I left the ER because they seemed so unconcerned with patient care. I don't want to have to deal with our health care system any more than I want to deal with our airlines. I keep hoping IHI and others will get enough of the system in decent shape before I need to use it. I think that is a tall order. But articles like this give me some hope.

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