Patients are waiting longer than ever for access to care...
It’s time to unlock the full potential of your APP workforce!
As many health systems face rising costs and growing workforce shortages, patients are waiting longer than ever for access to care. Advanced practice providers are an often-overlooked opportunity to help address this issue. While most organizations employ nurse practitioners and physician assistants – many are not utilizing them to their full potential.
SullivanCotter’s Joel Villegas explains how APPs can help organizations to realize significant gains in productivity, access, and professional revenue. Dive deeper into APP utilization, deployment, and team-based models of care at SullivanCotter.com!
Leverage your APP workforce to address financial and access challenges!
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Video Transcript
My name is Joel Villegas and I’m a Consulting Manager with SullivanCotter. I work in our Physician and APP Workforce Practice, and for over 10 years I have been guiding health systems as they redesign advanced practice provider and physician care models and compensation plans to better support their providers and patients.
Many health systems today are facing financial challenges. Rising labor costs, growing demand for services, and ongoing workforce shortages are all creating real pressure. At the same time, patients are waiting longer than ever for access to care. One important opportunity often overlooked is how advanced practice providers, including nurse practitioners and physician assistants, are being utilized. Most organizations employ APPs, but in many cases their full potential remains untapped. We have found that with an intentional redesign of the care model, organizations can unlock significant productivity gains, improve access for patients, and enhance professional revenue.
Some examples of how APPs can optimize practice are:
Serving as primary care providers, expanding panel capacity, managing defined subsets of patients independently, seeing pre- and post-op patients as well as identifying candidates for surgery, managing consults and treating emergency patients, which allows physicians to focus on the most complex cases.
When APPs are deployed this way, they are practicing at the top of their license. That not only improves patient access and revenue, it also increases engagement for APPs and creates new ways for physicians and APPs to collaborate as a team. And we know from our work with clients that engaged APPs are more likely to stay with an organization rather than look for another opportunity.
At SullivanCotter, we help organizations evaluate the opportunity to increase APP productivity which impacts access and revenue. We also assess cultural readiness for change. Once that is understood, we support organizations through a care model optimization process that guides provider teams with change management strategies to create a new care model that optimizes the role of the APP.
If you are interested in learning how your organization can better leverage APPs to address financial and access challenges, we would love to connect.