SHARE @ Advocate Health - Midwest - Scientific Day: Every Patient Needs a PCP - Active Attribution of a Primary Care Provider
 

Affiliations

Advocate Lutheran General Hospital

Abstract

Background/Significance:

Empanelment has been shown to effectively distribute the workload amongst providers in a specific practice resulting in increased patient and provider satisfaction. At the Advocate Lutheran General Hospital Family Medicine (FM) residency, like many residencies, there is not a specific protocol in place to establish a unique panel for each resident and many patients have inaccurate primary care physicians (PCPs) designated.

Purpose:

Our objective was to have 100% of patients seen at the Nesset Family Medicine office from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2023, assigned to a specific PCP by January 1, 2024.

Methods:

A flow sheet was designed to help select which provider should be designated as a patient’s PCP. Patient service representative (PSR) staff and residents utilized this flow sheet to manually re-assign each patient that had an outdated or inaccurate PCP. On our second Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, we switched to a random assignment protocol.

Results:

Our main outcome was measured to be the percentage of patients seen at the Nesset Family Medicine Residency Clinic that had a PCP who was a current resident. By the study's end date, we had increased from 61% to 92% of patients who were accurately assigned to a resident panel. As a balancing measure, a survey was distributed to determine the level of stress that this re-assignment process added to the PSR workload: 100% strongly agreed that manual re-assignment added stress. In comparison, 85.71% strongly disagreed with that assignment added stress during routine patient check-in.

Conclusions:

Patients can effectively be assigned to PCP panels in residency clinics using available tools in Epic EMR. While using a patient’s visit history to re-assign may be most accurate, this is a much more time-intensive and stress-inducing process compared to random assignment. Future plans include optimizing this process as third-year residents graduate from the program each year and possibly incorporating a way to weigh panels by patient complexity.

Presentation Notes

Presented at Scientific Day; May 21, 2025; Park Ridge, IL.

Full Text of Presentation

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Document Type

Poster


 

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May 21st, 11:41 AM May 21st, 1:15 PM

Every Patient Needs a PCP - Active Attribution of a Primary Care Provider

Background/Significance:

Empanelment has been shown to effectively distribute the workload amongst providers in a specific practice resulting in increased patient and provider satisfaction. At the Advocate Lutheran General Hospital Family Medicine (FM) residency, like many residencies, there is not a specific protocol in place to establish a unique panel for each resident and many patients have inaccurate primary care physicians (PCPs) designated.

Purpose:

Our objective was to have 100% of patients seen at the Nesset Family Medicine office from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2023, assigned to a specific PCP by January 1, 2024.

Methods:

A flow sheet was designed to help select which provider should be designated as a patient’s PCP. Patient service representative (PSR) staff and residents utilized this flow sheet to manually re-assign each patient that had an outdated or inaccurate PCP. On our second Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, we switched to a random assignment protocol.

Results:

Our main outcome was measured to be the percentage of patients seen at the Nesset Family Medicine Residency Clinic that had a PCP who was a current resident. By the study's end date, we had increased from 61% to 92% of patients who were accurately assigned to a resident panel. As a balancing measure, a survey was distributed to determine the level of stress that this re-assignment process added to the PSR workload: 100% strongly agreed that manual re-assignment added stress. In comparison, 85.71% strongly disagreed with that assignment added stress during routine patient check-in.

Conclusions:

Patients can effectively be assigned to PCP panels in residency clinics using available tools in Epic EMR. While using a patient’s visit history to re-assign may be most accurate, this is a much more time-intensive and stress-inducing process compared to random assignment. Future plans include optimizing this process as third-year residents graduate from the program each year and possibly incorporating a way to weigh panels by patient complexity.

 

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