Week four

The theme of my fourth week here was ambulatory care. As part of that, I visited the UW Medicine Northwest Outpatient Medical Center for my own medical care and had a wonderful experience with the entire healthcare team. 

With that said, I'm well aware that I was able to access specialty care so quickly because of who I am. I did not have to sit on hold with the call center or wait a long time for an appointment as many patients do. Turns out that my motivation for getting in quickly was to avoid having to interrupt the years of progress that I've made through allergy shots and risk having to "start over." 

Here is the backstory for those who are interested. When I met my husband years ago, he had two kittens named Phobos and Deimos (by the way you have probably figured out by now what he does for a living based on what he named his cats and our dog). The problem was that I was deathly allergic to cats. So a few months into dating, we had an open discussion about this quandary.

Several weeks later, he rented a car, put his two kittens in it, and drove up to Seattle from Los Angeles to give the two cats to his sister who lives in Everett (sound decision Brandon!!). And I agreed to get allergy shots which frankly I probably needed anyway because I had become that really sought after pulmonologist with frequent asthma flares who had a love-hate relationship with inhalers because of the large amount of public speaking I had to do in my career while suffering from "inhaler throat." 

Fast forward after some anaphylaxis along the way, my allergies and asthma are both better, and our pet of choice is now a dog. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my sister-in-law for taking those two kittens who actually ganged up on her two older cats for a while and became known in our family as the "Cali cat cartel." 

But back to the ambulatory care topic, I spent quite a bit of time with Matthew Satre this week who is the new Chief Ambulatory Officer for UW Medicine in charge of a new ambulatory design. We are lucky that our own DOM faculty member Shireesha Dhanireddy is also working on this in her role as Associate Chief Medical Officer (Ambulatory). Ambulatory care is so incredibly important here at UW Medicine, and we need to prioritize it as a system. 

Matt and I specifically discussed the need to embed physician leadership throughout the ambulatory structure to work directly with nursing and operational leadership for the most optimal results, and he is committed to physician co-governance in the new ambulatory design. In other words, the people delivering the care must help design how that care is delivered.

As part of this, I have joined the Ambulatory Care Executive Council being led by Matt and Shireesha and will engage many of you in the upcoming months to join the ambulatory design efforts as well. 

Our shared goals are to improve access and the patient experience while continuing to deliver the highest quality care, and this includes initiatives dedicated to our own faculty, staff, and trainees. On that note, I hope you all have the UW Medicine Contact Center Employee Line (206-520-5050) that you can use for your own healthcare. It is my true hope that most of us can access our own healthcare system for the care that we need - because, after all, our healthcare providers are the best in town!

Revamping ambulatory care is not an easy job, but Matt and Shireesha are up to the task and very focused on getting the right care to the right patient at the right time. That also includes matching the patient with the right provider. I agreed that we would work with their team closely on the DOM side given our vast ambulatory footprint, and we all agreed on the concept of "Progress over Perfection!" 

Until next time,
Tisha