Multi-specialty Scheduling System Using Acuity Scores
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current healthcare systems face challenges in coordinating follow-up visits and laboratory investigations across multiple specialties, leading to inefficiencies, duplication of services, and increased costs, while also affecting timely access to care and patient outcomes.
Innovation Solution
A multi-specialty integrated care clinic and laboratory scheduling system that uses risk and benefit-based calculations to prioritize therapy uptake, incorporating an autonomous vehicle for patient transport and a computer program for automated medical scheduling, which generates a Specialty Acuity (SPA) score and Total Overall Risk (TOR) score to optimize appointment scheduling and resource allocation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional individualized physician scheduling systems are used, then each physician can manage their own appointments independently, but coordination between multiple specialties becomes nearly impossible leading to duplicated lab investigations and increased healthcare costs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges individual physician scheduling systems into a single integrated multi-specialty scheduling platform that coordinates appointments across different specialties, laboratories, and imaging facilities. The system consolidates previously separate scheduling functions into a unified system that shares a common database and communication infrastructure, enabling coordinated care while maintaining individual physician control over their schedules.
Solution Approach 2:
The scheduling system is designed as a universal platform that handles multiple functions: appointment scheduling for different specialties, laboratory test coordination, imaging facility booking, result management, and patient notification. This multi-functional system replaces multiple separate systems while maintaining the ability to perform each individual function effectively.
2Reliability
If multiple separate appointments are scheduled for different specialists, then comprehensive care can be provided, but patients experience significant time loss and inconvenience due to multiple visits to the laboratory and different clinics
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary coordination of all necessary appointments, laboratory tests, and imaging studies before the patient arrives. By pre-scheduling and synchronizing these elements, the system ensures that patients only need to visit one location for all their care needs, eliminating the need for multiple separate trips to the laboratory and different clinics.
Solution Approach 2:
The system combines multiple care activities (specialist consultations, laboratory tests, imaging studies) into a single coordinated visit. By merging these previously separate events into one integrated appointment, the system maintains comprehensive care while dramatically reducing the time and inconvenience patients experience from multiple separate visits.
3Measurement precision
If laboratory investigations are repeated before each individual clinic visit, then each physician receives current test results, but duplication of lab investigations increases healthcare costs and patient burden
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements a feedback mechanism where laboratory results are automatically shared with all relevant physicians in the patient's care team through the integrated platform. This real-time information sharing ensures that each physician has access to current test results without requiring duplicate testing, as the system notifies all involved providers of new results and makes them available through the shared electronic medical record system.
Solution Approach 2:
The laboratory system is integrated into the universal scheduling platform, allowing a single set of laboratory investigations to serve multiple physicians and specialties. The lab system functions as a shared resource that can fulfill testing requirements for different specialists simultaneously, eliminating duplication while ensuring all providers receive the results they need.
4Reliability
If standardized scheduling based on clinical needs is implemented, then timely follow-up can be ensured, but the system complexity increases due to risk and benefit-based calculations across multiple specialties
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses parameter changes by implementing risk and benefit-based calculations that dynamically adjust scheduling priorities. Clinical factors such as patient risk level, urgency of care needs, and expected benefit from intervention are converted into quantitative parameters that automatically determine appointment timing and frequency. This standardizes scheduling decisions while maintaining flexibility for individual patient needs.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary scheduling algorithm that mediates between clinical needs and resource availability. This intermediary layer processes complex risk and benefit calculations, translates clinical priorities into scheduled appointments, and coordinates across multiple specialties and facilities. By placing this intelligent intermediary in the system, complexity is managed centrally rather than requiring complex point-to-point coordination between all providers.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of determining practitioner service intensity required per patient for automated medical appointments, data being a plurality of predetermined physical conditions of a patient, each of the plurality of predetermined physical conditions having a predetermined assigned weight based on level of severity, generating a summation of the total weight for each predetermined physical condition, generating a predetermined specialty acuity score by comparing the corresponding range of the total weight and generating a report to output of the specialty acuity score, the specialty acuity score used to determine priority of scheduling patients in a system. Specialty acuity score may be generated for each system affected, the systems each assigned a value of 1. Determining a modified TOR (“mTOR”) wherein the mTOR is the TOR divided by the summation of the SPA score and the PTI and using the mTOR is used to schedule appointments for patients in a system schedule.