Long on primary care growth, panel sizes, and care team model
Long describes H&H's primary care growth, including over 70,000 new primary care patients and a panel size increase from 1,500 to 1,750 patients per provider. He credits expanded care teams, data-driven scheduling, and reduced no-shows.
Over the last five years, New York City Health and Hospitals has seen substantial growth in primary care, with over 70,000 new primary care patients.
Today, New York City Health and Hospitals has more patients in primary care than in the history of our system.
This has been made possible through initiatives including
expanding primary care physicians'abilities to see more patients, allowing for more new patient access, increasing from 1,500 patients per full-time provider to 1,750.
Adding to our staffing model to ensure that primary care physicians seeing more patients does not impact access to timely care,
which means increasing the care team so that patients can get their care inside and outside the clinic from team members that include their primary care doctor, advanced practitioners that work directly with their doctors, chronic disease nurses.
Chronic disease clinical pharmacists, social workers, and community health workers.
Using timed, data-driven clinic slot opening tools to ensure the highest utilization possible for primary care providers has also increased access.
Finally, focusing on reducing no-shows through an iterative process so that no appointments go unused, including
changes to the SMS and telephone call reminder systems, both the messaging itself as well as the timing of the messaging.