This commentary is by Thomas Peterson, M.D., a family medicine physician in Colchester. He is chair of the Department of Family Medicine and chair of the Board of Trustees for UVM Health Network Medical Group.
The University of Vermont Health Network Medical Group is a community of more than 1,150 providers who — along with our hard-working and dedicated care teams — serve patients in Vermont and northern New York with primary, specialty, acute, hospital and critical care.
We are united in our passion for what we do — the commitment and the deep and caring connection we feel with our patients and our communities. Ensuring everyone gets the care they need at the right time is why we’re here.
It’s heartbreaking to know that, for some of our patients, this hasn’t been happening. We want all of the communities we serve to know that we are working hard to address it.
As chair of our medical group’s board of trustees, I am writing to share our board’s appreciation that the state of Vermont, through its recent “Health Services Wait Times Report,” recognized the fact that all members of the state’s health care community have worked extremely hard and selflessly during the Covid-19 pandemic, while facing substantial stress at work and at home.
The pandemic has exacerbated the complex issues behind patient wait times, while also introducing new issues into the mix. Through this, we have never lost focus on the urgent need to improve access for our patients. In the medical group, we are committed to meeting this need via ongoing quality improvement to make sure our care processes are safe, timely, effective, efficient, patient-centered and equitable.
For example, we have rapidly expanded the use of “eHealth” — a term that covers a variety of health care services enabled by technology and provided through video, phone calls and other digital connections. We conducted 153,371 patient video visits in 2021. For context, there were just 1,200 of these visits in 2019, and today video visits can cut down on wait times and get people the care they need in a much timelier manner.
Another aspect of this eHealth work is the eConsult, which allows primary care and specialty care providers within our network to consult with each other digitally and securely. This saves time for patients and providers and, most importantly, it helps us more quickly identify the right care for the patient in the rural region we serve.
Another care process initiative is the network’s Patient Access and Service Center, which is centralizing scheduling to connect people to care services and reduce wait times. There are positive results in specialties like urology, where we’ve seen a 55 percent reduction in appointment backlogs at UVM Medical Center as a result of the work of this center.
Like eHealth, the Patient Access and Service Center is expanding across our medical group and network, illustrating the evolution of our health system so we can meet the changing and growing needs of our patients.
We’re also pursuing capacity initiatives to improve patient access and reduce wait times. For example, our network is enhancing its efforts to recruit and retain providers and staff. And we’re investing in new and upgraded facilities and infrastructure, such as the recently reopened operating rooms at our Fanny Allen campus and a new PET scanner and MRI coming soon to UVM Medical Center.
We’re also working hard to continue to change the way health care is delivered and paid for, so we can focus on wellness as much as illness and provide the highest-quality, cost-effective care. By doing this, we can improve access, strengthen our relationships with patients and add services for our communities. One example is the expanding provision of mental health and substance-use treatment within our primary care offices.
The work to improve access for our patients requires intense and deliberate collaboration and planning with our network colleagues, and with health care and governmental partners, to implement sustainable solutions for the complex problems faced by both patients and health care providers today. We are continuing to develop and coalesce as a health system, and we are working amid strong headwinds — for example, a national health care workforce shortage, constrained resources and aging infrastructure. This is an incredibly challenging time in health care.
But what matters most is that all patients we serve in this region get the care they need. We all live here, and we are engaged in enhancing the health and well-being of our communities. Our care teams of providers and staff are here to help — it is what we do. We are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of everyone we serve by providing the best possible care for our communities, today and into the future.
