The University of Vermont Health Network has unveiled a plan that it says would shorten wait times for medical appointments with specialists.
At a press conference Tuesday, executives at the health network outlined a series of efficiencies aimed at solving an access-to-care problem that has only gotten worse with coronavirus.
They included improvements in recruiting efforts, electronic medical record systems and appointment scheduling — including plans for a unified medical record system that would allow patients to schedule appointments on their own.
Leaders of the health system, whose flagship hospital in Burlington is the largest in the state, have been vague on the current magnitude of the network’s wait time problem but said an investment in personnel, including pay increases and incentives, forms a pillar of the plan. Tuesday’s announcement did not include a concrete deadline for improving patient access.
The announcement comes after a Seven Days story found some patients had been waiting for weeks or even months to see a specialist. Vermont state regulators have launched an investigation that they hope to conclude by January.
“There’s no silver bullet,” John Brumsted, president and CEO of UVM Medical Center and UVM Health Network, said at the press conference. “There’s not going to be a time where we’re going to flick a switch and access is going to be totally fixed.”
Health network officials spent the bulk of Tuesday’s press conference outlining projects that were in the works long before the current staffing woes cropped up, but Brumsted said the network would complete these improvements faster than expected.
Brumsted said, for example, that psychiatric patients who need mental health beds have been waiting in the emergency room because of a lack of inpatient care. The health network has plans in the works for building a 25-bed inpatient psychiatric unit in Berlin, a project that the system’s been discussing since at least 2012.
Another project, construction of a standalone surgical center in Burlington, is tied up in the regulatory process and likely won’t conclude until 2024, Stephen Leffler, the medical center’s president and chief operating officer, said last week.
Officials also outlined several shorter-term steps, including adding a dozen more job recruiters to help fill network-wide clinician vacancies and hiring 19 more customer service representatives for a centralized call center to speed up the process of making appointments.
Executives also plan to roll out health records technology improvements that were put on hold by the pandemic and last year’s cyberattack that crippled the health system’s computers. The technology is expected to become available at the networks’ Vermont facilities by November. Software migration at health system’s facilities in New York State is slated to conclude next spring, according to a Tuesday press release.
Vermont’s investigation of long wait times is continuing, Mike Smith, secretary of the Agency of Human Services, said at the state’s weekly press conference Tuesday. Smith said he had not had time to review the UVM Health Network’s improvement proposals but emphasized it must include investments in personnel.
“Money is one aspect of that, whether it’s retention bonuses or something along those lines,” he said. “The culture is another aspect of it — how you develop a culture where people want to stay in the profession and here in Vermont.”
Members of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, a 2,400-member union at UVM Medical Center, raised their concerns over staffing levels challenges when they held a legislative roundtable forum Sunday. Sarah Girome, union vice president of organizing and an outpatient neurology nurse, said the health system’s construction projects won’t make a difference fast enough.
“The patients don’t care about the projects,” she said. “They don’t care about the things that we’re going to do years from now. Those are great, and I think that there’s a lot of things we can look to the future to help build the organization and help take care of our patients, but today, right now, they care about the fact that they’re not getting the care that they deserve.”
