Dr. Navpreet Sidhu, along with her sister Dr. Manpreet Sidhu, and the staff at the Fraser Lake Community Health Centre, have recently completed a project aimed at improving Well Woman Exams in terms of efficiency, and experience of both patients at providers.
Prior to initiating the project, Well Woman exams often took longer than necessary due to poor organization, planning, and inefficiency, and the excess time spent on these appointments limits access to other patients requiring healthcare services in a rural setting where services are already limited. The specific aim of Dr. Sidhu and her team was to decrease provider time spent in Well Woman visits in Fraser Lake by 50% by September 2021.
Dr. Sidhu was able to achieve her aim, and decreased her scheduled appointment time for Well Woman exams from 40 to 20 minutes by implementing several change ideas. They developed a standardized questionnaire that patients filled out prior to the appointment, which ensured information gathered from patients was consistent and met best practices, and also resulted in less required time with the provider, thus freeing up provider time to see additional patients. The team also created a standardized Dragon template to cut down on documentation time, while also ensuring consistent documentation. The clinic manager, Jill Hedstrom, developed a standardized checklist for exam trays, and prioritized training for the primary care assistants so that staff were consistent and efficient with set up for the well women exams. More information is available on Dr. Sidhu’s storyboard.