Hey its me! Sorry for the radio silence over the last few months, let me explain:
Over the summer, my wife suffered a pretty bad injury from a freak accident. What was supposed to heal in 2–3 months hasn’t, and now she needs surgery. Unfortunately, She is now feeling one of the biggest frustrations in our public health care system: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲.
𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲: I don’t claim to have all the answers, health care is a complex system and maybe it is a bigger fish than I perceive, but lets dive in.
After a chance conversation with someone in the medical space on the topic of the referral system, I started pulling on some threads. What I discovered shocked me:
The referral system, if we can even call it a system... Is broken.
My understanding:
1️⃣ See your doctor.
2️⃣ Get referred to a specialist.
3️⃣ Wait months for the specialist’s office to call.
⏳ Then wait months more for the actual appointment and on and on.
I had always assumed that, because this is a public system where patient care and fairness is paramount, there was some kind of centralized queue that prioritized critical cases, distributed patients efficiently and ensured fairness.
𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁… 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺.
The more I looked into how referrals work, the more concerned I became.
1️⃣ Referring a patient is an archaic, manual, and time consuming (faxes, phone calls) decentralized process.
2️⃣Front desk admins, who are likely overworked and distracted are charged with sending referrals out to one or more specialists, but usually don't have time to call all available doctors.
3️⃣ Admin's familiarity bias means referrals often go to the same oversubscribed doctors, leaving others underutilized, and increasing wait times.
We’ve all heard “be the squeaky wheel” and advocate for yourself. I used to think that meant getting on a cancellation lists or bumping up criticality, not leapfrogging others by accessing additional specialists. But the reality is, the current referral process is 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲. The better at 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 you are, the more likely you are to have the admin empathize with you and make additional calls and surprise, much earlier appointments!
If the above is true, it honestly sounds like a weekend hackathon to fix. Imagine:
⭐ A centralized system that tracks specialists’ skills and availability to maximize utilization.
🤔 A smart referral system that simplifies submission and automates match making based on priority and various other attributes.
The result: An efficient, expedited, fair and transparent matching system that would reduce wait times, increase patient certainty and enable doctors to be better utilized and paid.
What do you think? Have you experienced this? Am I missing something?
UPDATE: After posting the first version of this on Linkedin, a friend in the digital healthcare industry pointed out that this problem is known and https://pathwaysbc.ca/ is TRYING to be an agent of change. However, looking at the website, it looks like an opt-in service that has not hit a critical mass and without a provincial mandate to fix this, we are still a ways out.
#healthcare #hackathon #dowork
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