Thank you to all Medical Group caregivers, physicians, and APPs who are working diligently to improve Access and meet the Ease of Scheduling (EOS) KPIs this year. There is great work underway across the Medical Group to improve how our patients are able to schedule and receive care from our teams.
Approximately 78.5% of our patients give a high rating on the EOS for an appointment. Across the Medical Group, this measurement is holding steady. When analyzed based on our 2022 goals, we are close to entry (cumulative quarterly score of 77.3%). Celebrations of teams whose efforts have resulted in improved scores are happening now across the Medical Group.
The table below showcases this incredible work and how teams at our larger clinics are being recognized.
Clarifying the relationship between Access and Patient Experience (Ease of Scheduling and Likelihood to Recommend KPIs)
A common misperception: Physicians and APPs have expressed concern about the perceived tension between Access and Patient Experience: 'If we want ease of scheduling, we have to cram more patients. And therefore, people get shorter visits and longer waits when they're in the office and they're satisfaction scores will go down.'
Clarification: These two goals are likely more complimentary than it seems on first impression. Recall that the scheduling experience is the starting point for a patient’s overall experience with the clinic. A pleasant and easy scheduling experience is likely to contribute to the overall experience of the patient and can improve both KPIs at the same time when done well. In fact, Ease of Scheduling and Likelihood to recommend both share a common key driver – ‘staff worked together to care for the patient’ and exhibited a strong positive correlation. It is also important to remember that Ease of Scheduling metrics are based on the patient’s perception of the scheduling experience, and not specifically on the time it takes to get an appointment (though this may of course impact the perception).
A glimpse of this correlation can be seen in the monthly LTR performance graph below that follows a similar trend in the EOS performance graph in Figure 1 above. In other words, if we improve- our EOS performance (Access), we improve our LTR performance (Patient Experience). For those interested in analytics, EOS and LTR have a correlation coefficient of +0.5633 (based on an analysis conducted in August, 2022) reaffirming that ‘better EOS performance results in better LTR performance.’
Figure 1: EOS Monthly Performance Jan-Oct, 2022
Figure 2: LTR Monthly Performance Jan-Oct, 2022
We ask that you work together with your teams to correct this common misperception and continue your great work to improve our patient centered care, including Access and Experience.