Outer Cape Health Services Works to Improve Patient Experience

A multi-disciplinary team from Outer Cape Health Services recently completed a five month LEAN performance improvement training and presented their results at the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (the League). The trainings are supported with a grant from Partners HealthCare and are provided by the League, with support from GE Healthcare. The trainings aim to help health centers identify system changes that improve their effectiveness. The Outer Cape Health Services team sought to decrease patient wait time/cycle time and increase both patient and staff satisfaction. More specifically, the team chose to work on improving how walk-in patients were handled at the health center, which led to cutting scheduling challenges that can arise from walk-in services nearly in half. There was also a considerable decrease in the average wait time for all patients—from more than three hours to just 30 minutes.