Enhancing Care Access through Process Improvement in a Pediatric Behavioral Health Facility

The Sarah Reed Children’s Center, a mental and behavioral healthcare center in Northwestern Pennsylvania dedicated to providing superior care to children, confronts challenges with its patient intake and referral processes. The center specializes in trauma-informed care and offers evidence-based treatments, clinical practices, and professional training. Yet, the inefficiency of its current intake and referral procedures impedes timely access to its services, particularly in outpatient and partial hospitalization programs. Currently, the intake process spans five and nineteen business days for outpatient and partial hospitalization services, respectively. This protracted duration falls short of the center’s service standards and patient expectations. The center aims to reduce these times to four and seven days, respectively, to enhance service efficiency and patient satisfaction. To achieve this, process improvement methods are used to propose an alternative process flow and a refinement to the referral documents and forms. Our approach focuses on eliminating process bottlenecks, reducing unnecessary steps and waste, and streamlining documentation. This redesign aims to address the key issues of excessive processing, long waiting times, and suboptimal process flow, which collectively hinder the center's capacity to fully utilize its services. The goal is to establish a centralized care access system, integrating billing and financial operations, within a six-month implementation period. This transformation is expected to significantly improve patient and family experiences, ensuring quicker and more seamless access to vital mental health services, thereby reinforcing the center’s commitment to delivering exceptional care.