It may be disheartening to hear an appointment is not quickly available with your existing provider, or with a provider you are trying to get in to see for the first time. St. Lawrence Health (SLH) has made great strides in this area by offering Fast Pass to its patients who have a MyCare patient portal account.
Fast Pass began this past July, and applies to the mass majority of all Canton-Potsdam, Gouverneur, and Massena hospital-affiliated providers’ patients.
“We are excited to announce that our efforts to implement Fast Pass for the patients of our providers has been running successfully, and we will soon be extending the service to Behavioral Health patients who have a MyCare account,” noted SLH Director of Ambulatory Operations & Finance Gretchen Strawser.
Fast Pass is a wait list feature for patients who are enrolled in MyCare that automatically sends a text message or email (based on their preferences) to notify them of a wait list appointment offering. Upon receiving the message, patients can then log-in to the MyCare website or MyCare mobile app and claim the offer if it is still available, or decline the offer to keep the original appointment and wait for another offer.
“It is important to note that Fast Pass is for routine scheduling and excludes urgent referrals from the Emergency Department, or hospital follow-ups,” Ms. Strawser said.
At the time when a patient schedules an appointment, the scheduling team determines if a patient has an active MyCare portal account. If a patient has an account, the scheduling team will explain the wait list and Fast Pass process. If they do not, the scheduling team will encourage and work with them to create an account.
“Patients who would like an earlier appointment are ‘weeded out’ from those who have an annual exam or follow-up exam specifically scheduled for a later date,” Ms. Strawser explained.
The automated Fast Pass process garners its information from the Visit Type template in the program. Fast Pass automatically generates a report to identify the type of visit available compared to the patients on the wait list with that visit type. Patients on the wait list who are a match to the type of visit will receive a message offering them a sooner appointment. The patient can either accept, decline, or not respond. As soon as someone accepts the opening, that visit closes and is no longer open to anyone else to accept. If someone else tries to accept the appointment, they will be notified the appointment has been filled, and their name will go back into the wait list pool (as long as their appointment is more than three days away).
“Fast Pass runs individually for each provider’s office, so patients will only be informed when an opening becomes available with a provider they are scheduled with,” Ms. Strawser said.
SLH migrated to the Epic Patient Records System, which includes the MyCare patient portal, in April 2022. The adoption of this premier technology is an example of the benefits provided to SLH patients as a direct result of its affiliation with Rochester Regional Health and their commitment to advance healthcare in the North Country.
