Choctaw Nation clinics Improving Patient Care
Have you called Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority (CNHSA) Family Practice and wondered why you were directed to choose a Ruby Team, Jasper Team, etc.? These teams are all a part of CNHSA’s IPC program. CNHSA started the Improving Patient Care (IPC) Program at the McAlester Clinic in 2011.
The IPC program assigns patients to a care team. When a patient is assigned to a care team, every effort is made to get that patient in to “their” doctor at every visit whether it is a walk-in, same day, or routine appointment. This is an important part of why we have implemented these IPC concepts because CNHSA wants patients and providers to have that continuity of care and get our patients in to the provider that already knows them and their healthcare needs. CNHSA also wants the patient to get to know their provider/team and feel comfortable with them.
The IPC Care teams consist of the following members: Medical Provider, LPN, RN, Pharmacist, and Receptionist. Each team member has a specific role and work together to meet the needs of their patients.
• Being involved with IPC we have had the opportunity for our staff members to network with other facilities across the Oklahoma area and nationwide. Networking with others that are similar to our health system has allowed us a unique opportunity to gain valuable information to help with our improvements. We are able to learn what is working and also what is not working from other facilities as well as share our own accomplishments.
• IPC also focuses on the quality of care we are providing and gives us tools to measure this. We have performance measures that coincide with the current standards of care across the nation. We look at these standards of care for each team and the patients assigned to these teams continuously and look for areas for improvement. With this emphasis on looking at data and striving for improvement we are becoming more accountable and ensuring that we are providing high quality health care to the patients we serve.
• In 2012, the IPC Program was spread to all of the Choctaw Nation Health Care facilities.