Improvement in Total and Face-to-Face Provider Time in a Multidisciplinary Craniofacial Team Clinic: An...

Identify factors contributing to time a family spends in a Multidisciplinary Craniofacial Team Clinic (MDCT) and implement an intervention to reduce this time.

Interventional: a restructuring of clinics to serve those patients requiring fewer provider encounters separately.

An American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association-accredited MDCT in an academic children's hospital.

One hundred sixty-seven patients with craniofacial diagnoses.

Time data were tabulated over ∼2 years. Following 9 months of data collection, patients requiring fewer provider encounters were scheduled to a separate clinic serving children with craniosynostosis, and data were collected in the same fashion for another 14 months.

Principal outcome measures included total visit time and proportion of the visit spent without a provider in the room before and after clinic restructuring.

The average time spent by family in a clinic session was 161.53 minutes, of which 64.3% was spent without a provider in the room. Prior to clinic restructuring, a greater number of provider encounters was inversely associated with percentage of time spent without a provider (P < .001). Upon identifying this predictor, scheduling patients who needed fewer provider encounters to a Craniosynostosis Clinic session resulted in reduction in absolute and percentage of time spent without a provider (P < .001).

The number of provider encounters is a significant predictor of the proportion of a clinic visit spent without a provider. Clinic restructuring to remove patient visits that comprise fewer provider encounters resulted in a greater percentage of time spent with a provider in an MDCT.