When Exception to Policy Is Exceptional Policy: How Booking Physical Therapy Appointments Too Far in the Future May Adversely Impact Access to Care, Business Optimization, and Readiness.

Introduction: Physical therapy (PT) is a high-volume service that treats musculoskeletal injury and improves return-to-duty rates. Our experience suggests that no-show (NS) and patient cancellation (PC) rates increase the further appointment that is booked in the future, impede access to care, and increase the healthcare delivery costs. The article's purpose is to examine PT National Capitol Region (NCR) appointment data to inform appointment policies.

Effects of an MRI Try Without program on patient access.

Background: Pediatric patients are often sedated for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to ensure images are of diagnostic quality. However, access time for MRIs requiring sedation is often long due to high patient volumes and limited sedation resources.

Objective: This study examined the effectiveness of an MRI Try Without sedation program to decrease the wait time for obtaining an MRI while simultaneously ensuring diagnostic-quality images.

Understanding collaborative care implementation in the Department of Veterans Affairs: core functions and implementation challenges.

Background: The collaborative care model is an evidence-based practice for treatment of depression in which designated care managers provide clinical services, often by telephone. However, the collaborative care model is infrequently adopted in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Almost all VA medical centers have adopted a co-located or embedded approach to integrating mental health care for primary care patients.

Practical application of opt-out recruitment methods in two health services research studies.

Background: Participant recruitment is an ongoing challenge in health research. Recruitment may be especially difficult for studies of access to health care because, even among those who are in care, people using services least often also may be hardest to contact and recruit. Opt-out recruitment methods (in which potential participants are given the opportunity to decline further contact about the study (opt out) following an initial mailing, and are then contacted directly if they have not opted out within a specified period) can be used for such studies.