Interprofessional Workflow Enhancement at the University of Michigan Student Run Free Clinic: Phone Automation System Implementation
Background: The University of Michigan Student Run Free Clinic (UMSRFC) is an interprofessional organization dedicated to providing quality, free of charge, healthcare to uninsured community members. The UMSRFC involves collaboration between students in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work programs. The UMSRFC receives phone calls for seven patient-serving teams that must then be promptly sorted to the correct clinical teams to ensure patients’ concerns are appropriately addressed. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly high call volume, the UMSRFC transitioned to a voicemail-only system where patients were directly routed to a voicemail box without the ability to connect to a clinic team member.
Methods: To improve patient communication and better manage the high call volume, the UMSRFC Quality Improvement team researched potential solutions and decided to implement a phone tree system. A phone tree would allow patients to select which clinical team they would like to reach, automatically sorting calls to the appropriate teams for timely and efficient follow up. However, the UMSRFC phone provider, AT&T, was unable to support a phone tree. This concern was discussed with the University of Michigan’s Information Technology team, who recommended implementing a new phone number and phone tree system housed within Michigan Medicine. A phone tree was created using a new clinic phone number with options to reach each clinic team. Voice messages were recorded for each line in English and in Spanish.
Results: The phone tree was implemented on Monday, April 5th 2021. The average total number of voicemails requiring review by multiple clinic teams reduced from 65.67 calls/week in the month of March to 42.33 calls/week in the month of May, representing a 35.6% reduction. The system additionally decreased the time between patient call and clinic team response by bypassing the time required to communicate calls to appropriate clinic teams. Furthermore, patients were able to directly reach appropriate clinic staff to discuss billing concerns, insurance status, and lab result questions.
Conclusions: The UMSRFC phone tree system implementation reduced the need to communicate calls to appropriate teams, enabled faster communication with patients, and saved clinic team member time.
Reflections: As the UMSRFC expands its interprofessional health offerings to patients, systems for productivity and communication become increasingly necessary. The UMSRFC phone tree represents an important step towards enhanced clinic efficiency. Next steps involve the creation of a voicemail transcription system to facilitate triage of calls.
