Resource Center

Wait times are frustrating — for busy patients and busy clinicians.

At The Dimock Center in Boston, at least once every week, lack of a prior authorization meant that providers had to deny a patient a Suboxone prescription. Sometimes this happened as many as five times in a week. And every time, it meant a now unhappy patient waited for as many as four hours at the clinic. Staff members at Dimock, meanwhile, were overwhelmed and frustrated with the process.

Jonathan Lichkus, an MD/MPH student in Boston, and Jez-Marie Rodriguez, a medical assistant at The Dimock Center, decided to make some changes. The duo spearheaded an effort to reduce wait times and make life better for their patients. And they succeeded. In the two months after they ran several PDSA cycles and developed a new system with guidance from the IHI Open School Practicum, they had a total of five weeks without a denial.