The Journal of the Arkansas Medical Society Med Journal March 2020 Final 2 | Page 11

Good Communication Put in Practice
Administrator Jo Lynn Varner
by Casey L. Penn
L
ittle Rock Pediatric Clinic was the first
pediatric clinic in Arkansas to be recog-
nized by The National Committee for
Quality Assurance as a Patient-Centered
Medical Home for its use of evidence-based,
patient-centered processes that focus on high-
ly coordinated care and long-term, participa-
tive relationships. With seven physicians, one
nurse practitioner, and approximately 14,000
patients who make more than 29,000 office
visits annually, doctor-patient communication
can be an administrative challenge.
LRPC Clinic Administrator Jo Lynn Varner has
been on the job for 16 years. She shares insight
into her clinic’s approach to effectively handling
doctor-patient and staff-patient communication.
AMS: As clinic administrator, how do
you approach good patient commu-
nication?
Keeping the front desk focused on connecting to patients.
for instance, we have a live person ready to pick
up the phone.
AMS: Patient satisfaction is a big part of
LRPC’s success. How do you know pa-
tients are satisfied?
Varner: Communication with patients is
hard. We focus on providing as many access
points as we can for patients. We have a website
and Facebook page, and we were one of the first
pediatric clinics to set up a patient portal. Our
portal allows for patients to send secure messag-
es and photos to our staff. Last year, we started us-
ing secure emails through Outlook. However, you
can have all of that, but without doctors and staff
that support that, it isn’t going to work. Our doc-
tors and staff ensure that when a patient sends
something our way, we respond. You have a lot of
parents of children who don’t know if something
their child is experiencing is normal, so it’s so im-
portant to get back with them promptly. AMS: Phone systems have been a point
of contention and frustration for many
a patient. Tell me about yours. Varner: We have targeted questions on our
patient experience survey. All clinics participating
in Medicaid or Blue Cross are asking comparable
questions to ours (it’s required). One of our ques-
tions is, “How confident are you filling out medi-
cal forms by yourself?” That’s in their registration
and is answered periodically. As we identify folks
who need help with that, we have referral options
for Literacy Councils and other resources. Also,
on our post-visit experience survey, we ask, “How
well do you feel your physician listened and an-
swered your questions?” Together, these are sort
of a double check for us. We think we’re doing
well at patient communication, but this lets us
know if we really are. And this is something we
get consistently high scores on.
AMS: What about people who prefer a
direct approach over patient portals or
other online conduits? AMS: How do you help patients leave
the clinic knowing what’s expected
of them? We serve parents of growing children, so
they’re coming to the doctor often. We change
up survey questions annually since people tire
quickly. We try different things, too. For instance,
we had a patient family advisory group that met
quarterly to get some face-to-face feedback. Over
time, participation dwindled. We’re thinking
about trying something like that again in a more
virtual way to accommodate busy patients. We’ll
see how it works. Communication is a continuing
struggle. You must go at it from different angles
and hope something sticks.
Varner: With grandparents raising their
grandchildren, our physicians today counsel a
variety of age groups. But age aside, we have a
fair number of patients and caregivers who sim-
ply don’t want to be on the patient portal. For
those people, we have a dedicated phone nurse.
Our scheduling and billing are in house; in each
area, we have a dedicated person to take phone
calls. If patients have questions about their bills,
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Varner: First, I don’t have the front desk
people in the phone tree. The front desk is fo-
cused on people coming in the door. The phone
team is not patient-facing and completely be-
hind the scenes. We believe that the people in
the waiting room should not hear a lot of phones
ringing or people answering phones. Anyone
answering the phone is, for the most part, in a
restricted area. Second, we have tiered groups
answering the phone. If the main phone group
is full, calls roll over to the secondary group, and
then to the third tier.
Varner: We offer a lot of handouts. We’ve
found that patients want to leave the clinic with
something in hand. If it’s not a prescription, then
something. So, we have a lot of illness-specific
handouts. We give them developmental mile-
stones to look for in the next year. We give them
an updated shot record with information on
when the next shots will be due. Doctors give
them patient-education articles.
MARCH 2020 • 203