Reducing administrative burden through the use of IT tools.

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300 Background: With the increasing cost of healthcare, providers have been tasked with increasing efficiencies. While the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is a great tool for managing the patient at the time of their appointment, it can be difficult to utilize that information outside of and prior to the appointment. We recognized the need for better reporting to enable the end users to spend less time in front of a screen and more time with their patients. The need for better, more efficient data was evident. Simple data extracts from the EMR were not working. Methods: The operations analysts attended weekly huddles, shadowed clinicians, and immersed themselves in the data to better understand what is required from the reports. Multiple patient databases were created, along with dashboards, using a visual software package to display patient information. Information is then filtered into the dashboard for reporting, examples include: the patient’s appointments, treatment length, treatment location, and any other pertinent information that is needed. The reports are then automated to provide users a report with a specific snapshot of the patients coming to the clinic the following day/week. End users are then able to take the reports provided to them automatically and plan their time accordingly. Results: The reports are used daily/weekly (depending on the need of the report) by clinical and non-clinical teams. By leveraging appointment data from the back end of the EMR and the visual software package, end users no longer need to spend time combing through the EMR to identify future appointments. Information is tailored to their specific needs, which may be different from a clinical team to a non-clinical team. While it is difficult to quantify the exact value each report provides, one specific example for the Art & Music Therapy team is saving end users an estimated 4 hours per day, extrapolating out to 1,040 hours per year and freeing them up to provide better service to their patients. Conclusions: Combining appointment data and data visualization and automation tools allows teams to review the necessary information more efficiently. By reducing the manual burden of searching through the EMR, end users are able to free up their time and spend more time with the patient.