Background: Some time ago, for our evening clinic (visits after 5:30pm) we explored the idea of providing telephone visits as an alternative to a face-to-face visit to patients to improve service. We felt that this would be a more convenient alternative for the patient to get their medical needs met without having to come in. Attached is about 6 months worth of visits, which includes the telephone encounters. After we implemented the program, we wanted to use the visit data to determine how to staff for the evening appointments and evaluate the effectiveness of the program.
Please use this data to determine the effectiveness of the program by answering the following business questions:
- How many physicians would you need to staff the after-hours (appointments after 5:30pm) telephone clinic? Assume, that 1 physician can see 4 telephone visits per hour.
- How effective are the Telephone Appointments during after-hours (appointments after 5:30pm)? An effective telephone appointment is one where there are no follow-up appointments to the call within the following 7 days
- Based on the available data, what suggestions would you have to improve the effectiveness of the telephone appointments (reduce the number of telephone appointments needing a follow-up appointment within 7 days)?