Project Title: Improving OB continuity through basic office interventions Authors: Kelsey Heinrich MD
Program: Fort Collins Family Medicine Residency
Abstract: The duration of pregnancy is a unique period of frequent office visits, which can be a very stressful time for patients when they see multiple providers. Residency clinics pose a special challenge of providing continuity when residents are frequently on inpatient rotations, nights, and away rotations, leading to patients seeing even more providers. Most patients, as demonstrated in a pre-intervention survey, wish to have more interaction with their OB provider leading up to delivery. This project implemented multiple methods to try to improve continuity between OB patients, their provider and the provider’s color care team, including educating staff, in-room cues, and educating residents on their OB panel. After the interventions, we surveyed OB patients and found that patients felt they had more interaction with their provider leading up to delivery. This shows the power of basic interventions in setting, scheduling and communication can lead to improved patient satisfaction.
Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to…
• Describe the challenges of providing continuity OB care in a residency clinic.
• Consider the pluses and minuses of basic interventions to increase OB patient continuity.
Category: Outpatient quality improvement (QI)