807 - Speeding Up Smiles: Enhancing Pediatric Mobility Through Reduced Equipment Wait Times

Identify steps in seating clinic process that may be modified to reduce time from evaluation to delivery of equipment, eliminate redundancy, and optimize use of time.

Design: Process Improvement.

Results:

Data was pulled from one of our vendors' database. Average time from evaluation to delivery dropped from 99 days to 88 days. Average time for physician receiving and signing documentation initially decreased from 22 days to 7 days when converting to electronic signature system and remained below 7 days average. Seating clinic administrator tasks were eliminated by utilizing electronic signatures, electronic clinic documentation delivery at time of completion, and required supporting documentation was delivered directly to the vendors electronically or directly to the ATP when completed.

Conclusions:

Our prior process included numerous steps with hard copies of documentation which took time to collect, resources and time to print, and space to collect all documents until able to deliver complete package to the vendor. One change made was sending the paperwork to the vendor once completed versus our coordinator who then delivered it to the vendor. This decreased physical handoff of documentation which sometimes happened as little as once per week and reduced physical volume of documentation. Utilizing electronic means of communication, whether for signatures or document delivery, proved to be time efficient, safe, and concise (i.e. requests for signatures went to email vs a paper copy placed in a signature folder).