Care access — including the staffing that drives it — is one of the biggest operational challenges hospitals face today, Caleb Miller, senior vice president of surgical services and ambulatory care at Urbana, Ill.-based Carle Health, told Becker’s.
The eight-hospital system has taken steps to secure the resources needed to improve access by focusing on team member experience and upskilling. This includes building on the system’s culture, launching a scholarship reimbursement program and implementing internal job readiness training.
“People who may not be fully ready to take on that job — how do we create a job readiness training program internal to Carle Health, where they can step into that program and, after a period of time, be fully equipped to obtain a role they weren’t initially ready for upon joining the system?” Mr. Miller said. “We build them up from a competency standpoint as well as a support standpoint to come into that role and be very successful.”
Carle Health has also enhanced its EHR to improve efficiency for providers and care teams, he said. In the past year, the system introduced an ambient listening tool that summarizes clinical notes for advanced practice providers and physicians.
After expanding post-pilot, nearly 40% of Carle Health’s workforce has adopted the technology, processing more than 400,000 appointments using it. All providers who adopted the tool said it saved them at least 30 minutes of documentation per day, with many reporting more than an hour saved.
“Documentation after hours reduced quite significantly for those that adopted it,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s been a significant value add to our clinical teams.”
Improving access through revamped scheduling
A project that reimagined referral scheduling has enabled same-day or next-day access for acute care needs for primary care at Carle Health’s clinical locations, Mr. Miller said.
These efforts have been guided by systemizing care across regions and improving continuity of care between primary and specialty care, he added.
Initiated in early 2025, the referral scheduling project aims to develop a standard workflow for appointments and referral scheduling to improve care delivery, patient experience and outcomes.
Carle Health began by standardizing primary care visit types and scheduling decision trees, moving from three or four versions across regions to one. This reduced visit types from 127 to 26, enabling primary care teams to pass scheduling to patients if they choose.
This change has led to same- or next-day access for acute needs and some standard primary care visits, and allowed patients to schedule further in advance for primary care appointments.
“Our challenges and opportunities aren’t different than most, but we feel we’ve done a good job of taking them head on and really understanding how to keep the patient at the center,” Mr. Miller said.
