The demand reduction strategy, max packing, is when a healthcare provider strives to address as many of the patient’s needs as possible during a single appointment.
It is a method of maximizing patient visit efficiency by performing additional tasks during a medical visit.
Max packing helps reduce future work (demand) by eliminating the need for additional appointments, resulting in the freeing up of healthcare provider supply to see additional patients (increasing future supply).
Strategies
If a patient has an appointment on August 1 and also has another appointment booked on August 9, attempt to address all the needs during the first appointment and re-assess if the future appointment is still needed.
Create and use a preventative care checklist of a patient’s anticipated future needs. This could include:
- Alberta Screening and Prevention Program (ASaP) items
- prescription refills)
Many of these needs do not require a visit and can be managed by the team. Take care of those needs requiring a visit at the patient’s next scheduled appointment.
Consider max packing when the clinic’s schedule is ahead or on time (as a result of no-shows or unexpectedly short visits) to optimize the physicians and patients time as well as save capacity for future appointments.
Illustrative Example
Assumptions:
- A medical appointment to address one concern normally takes 15 minutes.
- Each additional concerns takes five minutes to address.
- Total clinic workdays per year is 225.
Using Max packing strategy:
- Max packing by spending five extra minutes with a patient
This saves 15 minutes in the future by eliminating a future appointment.
Net saving = 10 minutes. - Max packing even one visit/day prevents a future appointment = 150 more appointments
In one year a physician could save 10 minutes x 225 days = 2,250 minutes or 37.5 hours and have 150 appointments available for new patients to book!
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