We are so excited to welcome another 11 person team to our Sprint Optimization family!
Our success in re-designing the physician-clinical team-EHR interaction has led to substantial reductions in time spent in the EHR: 16 minutes PER PHYSICIAN PER DAY, and in our sample of one academic medical practice comprising 26 providers (advanced practice providers as well as physicians) this “average physician” is 0.4 FTE. Sixteen minutes is already no laughing matter, but it is possible to imagine that a physician spending 100% of their time in outpatient practice might conceivably save more than 30 minutes per day as a result of a 2-week Sprint.
As you may recall, we assembled an 11 person Sprint team, 1 physician informatics leader, 1 clinical informaticist (RN), 1 project manager, 5 trainers, 3 EHR analysts (who can build and alter items in the EHR). This team arrives on site, in a clinic (of up to 30 physicians and their clinical staff) and spends 2 weeks listening, watching, building tools, and most importantly, coaching EHR use and TEAMWORK and COMMUNICATION strategies to improve care of patients as well as reducing wasted effort.
This has been noticed by our organization (UCHealth) and we are now 22 strong, 2 teams conducting sprints every 2 weeks (with 1 week of recuperation), and 15 sprints per year.
CMIO’s take? It is gratifying when the snowball effect works in your favor. We are striving to shorten the cycle-time between repeated Sprints in clinics. This is a big step in that direction.
