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New medical group policy strives for efficiency

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Benjamin Kim
  • 1st Special Operations Wing Public Affairs
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. --  The 1st Special Operations Medical Group amended their "no-show" policy effective immediately on Hurlburt Field, Fla., May 7.

To improve efficiency and efficacy, the amendment clarifies the portion of the policy dealing with what is considered late or patients who do not arrive at all, which is succinctly stated with the expectation that all patients arrive 15 minutes early.

"We changed some very small wording in our policy letter," said Chief Master Sgt. Christopher Lantagne, superintendent of 1st Special Operations Medical Group. "What the policy letter originally said was that we wouldn't consider somebody a 'no-show' up to 10 minutes past their appointment time."

According to Lantagne, patients often misinterpreted this as a 10-minute buffer zone, being allowed to arrive to appointments up to 10 minutes late.

"What ends up happening is people show up late, and of course, if you're supposed to be here by 1 p.m. and you come in at 1:10 p.m., now you're pushing all the subsequent appointments back for the rest of the day," Lantagne said. "We have our providers who are trying to see their patients, and then the next patient has to wait an additional 10 minutes, then the next patient has to wait an additional 20 or 30 minutes or an hour, and eventually the providers get behind--It tends to cause problems."

The repercussions of wasting time at the medical group seldom resulted in disciplinary action, even though the policy allowed them to reserve the right to report any late arrivals or no-shows to respective unit commander leadership.

"As long as it wasn't a huge issue, it didn't really become a huge issue for us, so we haven't really reported those in the past," Latagne said. "That's one of the things we're going to start doing again consistently."

Lantagne believes the stringent attitude is not to circumvent annoyances, but to make sure that those who need medical care receive it on a timely basis and to ensure coverage of all personnel--"slot missed is a slot wasted".

"[The new policy] won't completely alleviate providers falling behind, but it will certainly minimize that," said Lantagne. "We try as best we can to respect the customers time, just as we would like our customers to respect ours."