UCHealth implemented an innovative physician leadership model to establish a best-in-class contact center that features appointment scheduling, patient preregistration, referral management, prescription refill coordination, and nurse advice.
UCHealth is a highly complex system of over 150 ambulatory locations, 12 hospitals, and approximately 3,000 providers across Colorado and southern Wyoming. The system includes academic physicians who are part of the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s faculty and community-based physicians who are employed through UCHealth Medical Group.
Executive leadership identified two high priority areas in need of improvement. First, to improve efficiency and patient satisfaction, the practice and care teams’ communication processes with patients needed a dramatic overhaul. Second, patients’ access to care needed to be expanded. UCHealth decided to address these priorities by deploying system resources for patient-facing support services, such as appointment scheduling, through a centralized patient contact center.
With multiple stakeholders and perspectives involved, a careful balance was needed between how patient-centric or provider-focused the contact center would be. At the local level, two co-equal physician access leaders (PALs)—each working as a 0.5 FTE and sharing the duties of the role—were instrumental in interacting with physicians throughout the planning, design, and go-live phases of the contact center project. The PALs coached providers through operational changes and advised system leadership by providing strategic guidance and determining resource allocation.
The PALs and ECG worked together to:
