Buy this Article for $10.95

Have a coupon or promotional code? Enter it here:

When you buy this you'll get access to the ePub version, a downloadable PDF, and the ability to print the full article.

Authors

  1. Volk, Angela S. MD
  2. Hollier, Larry H. Jr MD
  3. Karon, Grace N. BS
  4. Bank, David E. MD, MBA

Abstract

A major focus of US health care systems is ensuring timely patient access to subspecialty care. This article describes the experiences of a large children's hospital after implementation of clinic session standardization and template optimization. Outpatient specialty clinic sessions were standardized to 4-hour periods, and all unfilled complex appointment slots were made available for any appointment type within 72 hours of the clinic date. Three high-demand outpatient clinical services achieved increased aggregate potential and completed outpatient appointments over a 2-year period. These improvements were mostly due to an increase in providers and were not always coupled to shorter patient lag times.