Becker's Hospital Review
Chuck Thigpen, PhD, PT, ATC, Clinical Research Scientist, Proaxis Therapy, and Mike Kissenberth MD, Vice Chair of Orthopaedics, Greenville Health System
The emerging healthcare environment requires expanded patient access while minimizing the cost of care. This is of particular importance for accountable care organisations that are assuming significant risk and must develop more innovative ways to deliver care to drive better outcomes and wring out inefficiencies. Our practise has experienced this struggle on a daily basis as patients, who needed a surgical consult, were frustrated with limited access. Our clinical schedule was filled with non-surgical candidates. This created a paradox where the most specialised health system resources (e.g., surgeon and MRI) were being allocated to a continuum of care that did not result in better care or outcomes, while also increasing physician and patient frustration. The long-standing dilemma was that the wrong patient was often in the wrong clinic leading to an inefficient and circuitous path for the delivery of appropriate care. When evaluating our practise it was clear that we could improve our allocation of available resources with the outcome being happy patients and happy physicians within a healthcare system that was delivering high quality, low cost, appropriate care.