About

Starting Semester: Fall 2024
Assigned: Yes
Location: Atlanta

Emory Healthcare

Client Profile

Interventional radiology (IR) and image-guided medicine (IGM) continue to impact patients throughout the world. Transarterial procedures (procedures that require access to an artery) include: uterine artery embolization for abnormal bleeding due to fibroids and/or postpartum hemorrhage, prostate artery embolization for treatment of symptoms related to an enlarged prostate, treatment of tumor in the liver with tiny spheres coated in radiation or chemotherapy, and treatment of life-threatening internal bleeding either in the setting of trauma or gastrointestinal bleeding, among other procedures. Nevertheless, access to these procedures, much like endovascular stroke therapies, remains limited. Roughly only 11% of counties in the United States have an interventional radiologist who lives there and recent work by the American Medical Association shows a severe shortage of specialists like interventional radiologists will only worsen over the next decade. A major gap in access is widespread. In addition, patients may have transportation issues that prevent them from getting to the specialist who can help them.

Project Description

Emory Interventional Radiology recently consolidated multiple independent departments at each hospital into a single department working across the entire healthcare system. As a result, new workflow designs are needed to support this recent integration to ensure we provide a great experience for our patients. One of the workflow designs we would like to optimize is the approach taken to scheduling our physicians. For Emory healthcare, our ability to maximize operations with current resources rests solely on our ability to effectively schedule Physicians and maximize the resources at each location based on their availability, call schedules, etc. if we are able to optimize physician schedules across the enterprise, there will be direct impact to patient lives, access, throughput, and increased revenue.



Key metrics/ Desired Outcomes:

1. 80% of all outpatient procedures completed within 10 business days or less

2. 80% of all biopsies completed within 5 days or less

3. Referral to patient scheduled within 24 hours

4. Patient Scheduled to patient arrived within 10 days or less

5. Patient arrived to procedure complete (Procedure dependent)

6. Procedure complete to follow-up complete (Procedure dependent)

Skills

Workflow Analysis
Lean/ Six Sigma Improvement