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

What our enrolled practices are doing:

• Hired a medical answering service.

Resources

Site: Enhanced Access