• J Gen Intern Med · Sep 2024

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

    • Mayu Sekiguchi Runge, Lauren Meade, Zaid Obaida, Vincent J Mariano, Nicola Sumorok, Eric Churchill, Sudeep Aulakh, Booker Bush, Linda Canty, Leilani Kidder, Brian Bourgeault, Katherine Newport, Emanuel Parrilla, and Paul A Pirraglia.
    • Department of Medicine, Division of General Medicine and Community Health, High Street Health Center, Baystate Health, Springfield, MA, USA. Mayu.Runge@baystatehealth.org.
    • J Gen Intern Med. 2024 Sep 1; 39 (12): 234323462343-2346.

    BackgroundCommunity health centers grapple with high no-show rates, posing challenges to patient access and primary care provider (PCP) utilization.AimTo address these challenges, we implemented a virtual waiting room (VWR) program in April 2023 to enhance patient access and boost PCP utilization.SettingAcademic community health center in a small urban city in Massachusetts.ParticipantsCommunity health patients (n = 8706) and PCP (n = 14).Program DescriptionThe 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 EvaluationPost-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.DiscussionThe 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.© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Society of General Internal Medicine.

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