IRVING, TX – The average wait time for scheduling appointments for family and specialty practices is on the rise, according to a recent report by Merritt Hawkins and Associates.

Expanded access, physician shortages across the country and greater administrative and regulatory burdens are contributing to the inability of physicians to see their patients in a timely manner.

As the healthcare industry moves away from a delivery model to a consumer-based model, however, patient experience and the metrics that weigh in on patient experience - such as wait times - becomes increasingly critical for providers, said Ned Moore, CEO and co-founder of Portico Systems. "IT can help here," he said.

Healthcare IT can ease the administrative burden by identifying the bottlenecks in the physician's workflow and automating processes, which will make the physician office more efficient, Moore said.

A good example of how healthcare IT can help is with patient-centered medical home (PCMH) pilots, which are on the rise. PCMHs require coordination among all caregivers, but the primary care physician is in charge of coordinating that care. Lags in the continuity of care may result if all the necessary clinical information is not shared among the primary physician and a patient's specialists. With an integrated workflow across the care continuum, IT can provide the connectivity and access to information in real time, enabling timely scheduling of patient visits, Moore said.

Just as drop-offs can occur from doctor to doctor, they can also happen between payer and doctor, he said. "There are multiple points of hand-offs," Moore said. An automated system can speed the pre-authorization process by delivering the required information to the payer in real time.

Creating an integrated workflow across the continuum of care will be especially critical if the upcoming healthcare reform includes providing access to health insurance for the approximately 47 million currently uninsured people in the United States, Moore said. "As the lag times increase, what will the system look like when we get the uninsured into the system?" he said. "We're going to have to manage that population."

IT can play a very specific role to automate processes and drive efficiency, and thereby "doing the right thing for the patient," Moore said.