To strengthen team-based care practices, many health centers are adding new roles to care teams.
In our 2017 cycle of Catalyst, La Clínica de la Raza began piloting solutions to integrate clinical office assistants into the care team.
La Clínica de la Raza is a Federally Qualified Health Center that delivers health care services in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner to most effectively address the needs of the diverse populations it serves in Alameda, Contra Costa, and Solano Counties.
| Organization | La Clínica de la Raza |
| Issue | Clinical office assistants are not integrated into the care teams, which contributes to missed communication opportunities for patient care and workflow. |
| Solution Tested | Integrate clinical office assistants into provider-and-medical assistant huddles. Explore color-coded badges as a way to visually show patients who is on their care team. Create a waiting room board that displays provider wait times to patients and staff. |
| Stage | Piloted on a small scale. |
| Financial Investment | $$ |
| Partners | Quality improvement program manager, clinic supervisor, lead clinical office assistant, physician, and medical assistants. |
Clinical office assistants report feeling disconnected from the medical assistants and providers.
Clinical office assistants often have to interrupt medical assistants to get more information for or about patients.
La Clínica’s clinical office assistants joined the care team huddles as a way to be better integrated into the care team. Color-coded badges signal members of the same care team, and a board in the waiting room communicates information to patients.
To incorporate clinical office assistants (COAs) in the huddles, the project team created a checklist of topics that medical assistants and COAs need to talk about in order to have an efficient meeting.
Patients interviewed for this project expressed that they would like the COAs to be more involved in their care. So La Clínica created color-coded badges, so that it would be clear which staff belonged to which care team.
The team also created a board in the waiting room that let patients and staff know about provider wait times — a key piece of information that patients were consistently asking about.
Date |
Milestone |
| August 2017 | Implemented color coding of care teams at San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center, one of La Clínica’s sites. Developed huddle checklist for clinical office assistants. |
| September 2017 | Piloted clinical office assistants joining huddles. Piloted and evaluated the communication board. |
| October 2017 | Implemented the communication board. |
| November 2017 | Continued testing and evaluating huddles. |
Medical Assistant La Clínica de la Raza“I like that there was more communication between clinical office assistants, providers and medical assistants. We had a better idea of what our clinic flow was going to be and how to better prepare. I want to see this process as part of our daily workflow.”
Interested in learning more about this project or how to test in your organization? Contact Elizabeth Odell, Quality Improvement Program Manager at La Clínica de la Raza.
