Passport to Office of Patient Access

Passport to Office of Patient Access

By: Norma Casas, Staff Analyst – Operational Support
PTC

Passport to Office of Patient Access

Passport to Office of Patient Access 788 468 Health Services Los Angeles County

Patient Transfer Center: Peter Balingit, MD, Margarita Cuevas, RN & Faustino Maranan Jr, RN

The Office of Patient Access (OPA) (links referenced in this article are only accessible to LA Health Services staff unless noted otherwise) recently hosted its All-Staff Meeting. This year’s event was based on a travel theme to reflect “The Patient Journey,” as a way for staff to learn about the nine (9) program areas under OPA, including: the Central Contact Center which operates the Nurse Advice Line / Physician After Hour Line, Primary Care Linkage, Specialty Care Linkage / Mama’s Line; Office of Language Access and Inclusion; OPA Strategic Development & Training; Patient Engagement & Communications; Patient Financial Services; Patient Transfer Center and the automated Appointment Reminder system.

SPCLinkage

Specialty Care Linkage / Mama’s Line: Iris Medrano, Denise Carranza, Elliot Soto & Jaquelina Gil

Staff were issued “passports” to travel through a Patient Journey in our healthcare system. Each passport included a patient scenario where staff discussed and identified the program area that would help the patient through that part of the journey.

Patient Journey Example:

An out-of-network hospital is requesting to transfer a DHS assigned patient to a DHS hospital for higher level of care. DHS does not have capacity in any of our hospitals for this patient but does identify that a time-sensitive specialty follow-up is needed. Patient prefers to receive healthcare in Spanish and wants to be able to see her future scheduled appointments on her phone.

PEC

Patient Engagement & Communication:
Jihan Awad, MSHA & Anshu Abhat, MD

At each program display table, overviews were presented, priorities shared, and questions answered.  Staff traveled to four (4) program areas, moving from table to table, collecting passport stamps (stickers), based on their patient journey.

The goal of this event was for staff to learn more about each other’s work so that we are better prepared to help our patients navigate through our system and reduce the barriers patients may face when we work in silos. And of course, the goal was also to have fun!

OLA

Office of Language Access and Inclusion:
Leonor Orr & Dawn Flores

The work of OPA touches patients at all of our facilities. Help us continue to improve the patient’s experience/journey/linking to services by learning more about the program areas under the Office of Patient Access through our SharePoint intranet site.

Questions about the event? Contact Norma Casas at ncasas@dhs.lacounty.gov.