Healthcare access is not just about wait time, according to Baligh Yehia, MD, president of Jefferson Health.
The 32-hospital Philadelphia-based system, views the issue of access as a multidirectional problem. More than 3 in 5 Americans cannot access affordable, quality care, according to a 2024 Gallup poll.
Complete access to healthcare looks like a low wait time, having the appropriate type of care in a nearby facility, and being treated from a culturally competent perspective, Dr. Yehia said.
To accomplish its mission of improving lives, Jefferson needed to expand access to care — and have a culture that matches the effort, Dr. Yehia said. One creative strategy the system has developed is its Same Day/Next Day Cancer Care program.
At Philadelphia’s Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, cancer patients can access an oncology clinician via telehealth within 48 hours. Since launching the program about a year ago, more than 1,200 patients have used the service, Dr. Yehia said.
Emergency department patients have derived an unexpected benefit of the program, he said: “Some of those folks might have an abnormality [from a scan], others might not have cancer. What we have realized is, who wants to wait, right?”
Based on the cancer care program’s success, Jefferson has launched a parallel initiative with transplant evaluations. The system will bundle scans, labs and a doctor’s visit all in one visit so patients can avoid several appointments for transplant evaluations. Another such program is live in a new sports medicine orthopedics clinic in downtown Philadelphia.
Other offerings designed to enhance access are home health, virtual primary care and two stroke vans that administer therapy before arriving at the ED. The gastrointestinal care team also coordinates a colonoscopy day every few Saturdays for patients who cannot make it during the workweek.
“Depending on who you are, where you live, your circumstances, we want to create as many front doors as possible, which I think is part of the way to solve for access,” Dr. Yehia said. “Because every person is different and every community is different.”
For example, a few of Jefferson’s clinics are fully Russian-speaking or Chinese-speaking facilities, “because that’s the communities that we serve in some of those areas,” he said.
Jefferson said it also improves access by providing continuity of care within its system, helping physicians achieve high productivity levels, grow its workforce, connect with more patients post-discharge, and smooth out patient flow, such as length of stay and ED throughput.
“[Access is] one of those things that’s been talked about forever, and it’s still an issue,” Dr. Yehia said. “For us, it’s a constant journey.”
“Despite all our advancements in AI, new tech and new therapies, we still have issues with making sure that we’re able to connect people in the right locations with the right doctor with the right care, something that’s both affordable and also equitable,” he added. “So that’s part of the reason why we’re striving to be the most accessible system.”
