— Chris Schneider, MD, FACS, Department of Surgery, Wright State Physicians
My interest in streamlining patient care, improving patient satisfaction, and prioritizing individual patients over all other concerns has been ongoing for over a decade. I recently started working with the IPC to develop a way to further enhance that ability to provide for patients in a cost effective and patient centered manner. I was uncertain as to when and if the benefits for patients would be realized.
It was quite rewarding when the first (of several already and many to come I know!) of those patients arrived in the office to be seen. This patient of Dr. Charles Bane’s, with metastatic lung cancer and a new mass of the small intestine who was in near intractable pain needed urgent surgical evaluation. Through our developing relationship the patient was referred over and seen 24 hours later.
We had a great discussion, history and physical exam and went over her CT scans that day. It was in that discussion that I was told by her that they had made another appointment with a surgeon in one of the large networks in town, but that appointment was 3 plus weeks away. Per her preference we had her on the OR schedule 4 days later for her surgery (laparoscopic small bowel resection) and she was home the following morning. She returned to the office nearly two weeks later and said how good she felt and that the date of that follow up was the same date as the scheduled FIRST appointment with the other provider. She was seen by multiple specialists who all communicated with each other, she had surgery, she had follow up with Dr. Bane, and she had follow up with me in the time period during which she would have been waiting to be seen for the FIRST appointment! Talk about a great project and I know this is just the first of many of these situations to come. We CAN and SHOULD be able to offer this type of coordinated, collegial, quality access to care through this collaborative effort. And at the end of the day the patients are the ones who win and that raises the bar of care in the entire Dayton area.
