ABSTRACT
Background: Delays in patient access due to excessive wait times for clinic consult appointments impair timely diagnosis and treatment, resulting in worse outcomes.
Local problem: Average days wait (ADW) for clinic consult appointments for the cardiology group of a regional managed care organization was too long. A quality improvement project (QIP) was undertaken to improve efficiency/efficacy of patient coverage and reduce ADW by implementing a new cardiology hospital service with expanded roles for nurse practitioners (NPs).
Methods and intervention: The QIP used the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Model for Improvement. The new cardiology hospital service deployed a group of 11 cardiologists and three cardiology NPs who rotated between hospital and clinic service. Two cardiologists and one NP covered all cardiology inpatients, alleviating the need for clinic-assigned cardiologists to also see hospitalized patients, thus improving capacity. The primary measure was ADW, whereas secondary measures included patient satisfaction with access, hospital readmissions, clinic cancellations, and provider job satisfaction.
Results: All measures were assessed on pre/post 6-month averages. Average days wait reduced from 28 to 14; patient satisfaction improved from 39% to 52%; readmissions reduced from 13.2% to 9.7%, and provider job satisfaction with the intervention was 91% positive. There were no significant changes in potential confounding factors and no identified negative consequences.
Conclusions: Implementation of a cardiology hospital service leveraging NPs was feasible, increased capacity to improve patient access and associated outcomes, and did not manifest any known adverse impacts.