Why do we use it?

Insights Result in New Service Line

The analytics also showed that if the practice was too busy to see migraine patients while they were hurting, even when a visit was scheduled within 48 hours of the migraine’s onset, the patient’s chance of cancelling, re-scheduling or not showing up for the appointment grew exponentially as time increased. By introducing a same day headache clinic for established patients that was staffed by a nurse practitioner, patients who were in pain received rapid care to abate their symptoms, increasing visit volumes, utilization rates, collections, and patient satisfaction.

Benefits of Extended Hours

Analytics also showed that patients who could not be worked into the schedule were likely to visit the emergency department (ED) for pain relief. Many of those unplanned ED visits occurred after work when our office was closed. As a result of this insight, the practice piloted evening hours two nights per week. By adjusting practice hours to meet the needs of our working migraine patients, these patients received pain relief on the same day as symptoms began, and they stayed out of the ED. An added benefit for our providers and support staff was a welcome bit of scheduling flexibility which increased their satisfaction with our organization, which lowered both planned and unplanned time for personal and family needs.

Achieve Value-based Care Incentives

By sorting call data by diagnosis code, particularly for migraine and headache patients, the practice was able to demonstrate the tremendous volume of migraine and headache patients were well-managed within the practice versus the ED. Care in the office is far less expensive. Patients have lower wait times and faster pain relief, and the practice’s population was among the top quartile in performance, setting us up nicely for incentives from our payer contract.