Milestone 12: Practice has a system in place for patient to access their care team 24/7.
Goal: Practice has a clinician available from the practice or on contract who can speak to patients after hours while being able to access the patient’s record.
Strategies
Create a centralized call center operation to more efficiently manage patient calls
Maintain a patient portal and encourage its use by patients and families
Set up a secure messaging system or use Direct Secure Messaging
Provide 24/7 access to provider or care team for advice about urgent and emergent care
Provide care team with access to medical record after hours
Ensure providers who are cross-covering have access to medical record
Protocol-driven nurse line with access to medical record
Expanded hours in evenings and weekends with access to the patient medical record (e.g., coordinate small practices to provide alternate hours’ office visits and urgent care).
Use alternatives to increase access to care-team and provider, such as e-visits, phone visits, group visits, home visits and alternate locations (e.g., senior centers and assisted living centers).
Provide same-day or next-day access to a consistent provider or care team when needed for urgent care or transition management
Provide a patient portal for patient-controlled access to health information
Use warm hand offs for cross coverage
Implement a 24-hour nurse call line that is algorithm-driven