The Baystate Medical Practices are committed to providing quality healthcare to patients when they want and need it. Our goal is to improve access to care for our patients in order to meet the needs of our customers. Efforts have been made to improve ease of and timely access to care.

We are committed to provide current as well as new patients an appointment for routine care within 2 weeks. Processes have been devised to provide care when a patient is ill the same day if needed or within 24 hours.

We measure access to care using the industry standard of Third Next Available appointment. The Third Next Available appointment is the average length of time in days between the day a patient makes a request for an appointment with a physician and the third available appointment for a new patient physical, routine exam, or return visit exam.   The Third Next Available appointment is used rather than the "next available" appointment since it is a more sensitive reflection of true appointment availability. For example, an appointment may be open at the time of a request because of a cancellation or other unexpected event. Using the Third Next Available appointment eliminates these chance occurrences from the measure of availability.

Currently 57% of the primary care and specialty practices have Third Next Available access for a new patient in less than 14 days.

Highlights

The Baystate Medical Practices have developed strategies and implemented changes to improve processes to assure that patients have timely access to care.

Strategies include:

• Flexible appointment schedules
• Cross coverage if the primary physician is not available
• After hours care evenings and weekends at selected locations
• Using patient feedback to promote improvements