Dermatology Practice Redesign

Mayo Clinic’s community dermatology practice was not seeing enough patients for the size of its facility. In addition, the mix of patients was not financially sustainable: there were many Medicare patients, but their reimbursement was not enough to meet the expenses of the clinic.

Dr. Clark Otley, head of the dermatology practice, brought in the CFI team, which analyzed each part of the practice in detail. Then the CFI helped the practice to devolve some of the work away from the physicians: clinical assistants took charge of having patients complete the medication reconciliation forms, a time-consuming process that had been done by nurses and doctors, and the nurses took over much of the work of documenting the patient visit, using a new template.

The result was that the members of the care team were more nearly practicing at the top of their competency, and the practice was able to increase its business from 35 to 65 patients per day.