Success Stories

Nebraska Medicine Grew Volume and Kept Infusion Center Wait Times Under 10 Minutes

28% Decrease in patient wait times at Village Pointe

20% Decrease in patient wait times at Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center

12% Increase in scheduled patient volume

8% Increase in completed patient volume

Summary

The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center opened in Omaha as part of Nebraska Medicine in July 2017. This state-of-the-art facility consists of the Suzanne and Walter Scott Research Tower, where researchers have received more than $185 million in grant funding; the C.L. Werner Cancer Hospital, an 108-bed inpatient treatment center; and a multidisciplinary outpatient center, which includes clinics, radiation oncology, surgery, radiology, and a 24/7 treatment center and lab. The only NCI-designated cancer center in the state of Nebraska, the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center treats more than 60,000 patients each year.

Profile

65 chairs

3 centers

Epic EHR

NCI / NCCN designation

Academic Medical Center

Midwestern US

Problem

As part of such a large and diverse network of care, which serves patients in a wide geographical area, both the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center as well as the Cancer Center at Village Pointe needed to be able to accommodate a large number of add-on appointments and linked services. They also needed to increase patient access to care and capacity without adding full time employees.

Meanwhile, both cancer centers experienced common capacity challenges in infusion spaces that hindered these goals. Scheduling practices led to a too-heavy load of patients in the morning and midday, capacity was frequently overbooked, and appointments consistently ran long or behind so that nurses missed breaks and lunches. The Nebraska Medicine centers needed a solution to better distribute patient loads among the chairs and staff it already had.

Solution

Nebraska Medicine leadership deployed iQueue for Infusion Centers to optimize infusion workloads throughout the day, provide true visibility into overall scheduling decisions, and understand why days did not go as planned. As a result of the iQueue implementation, the center achieved an increase in average completed volumes while utilizing already-existing resources, a decrease in infusion wait times, and an overall positive impact on nursing workflows. Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, in particular, more efficiently utilized existing resources to successfully increase patient volume without adding chairs.

We’ve seen tremendous success and kept our wait times under 10 minutes while increasing patient volumes by using iQueue for Infusion Centers, including the Executive Summary feature.

Becky Duchman

Director Ambulatory Infusion/Treatment Services, Heartland Oncology Clinic & Infusion, Kearney, Nebraska