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Leaders at WMed Health are taking a look at their practices and how to more efficiently serve their patients.

WMed Health’s Pediatric Multiple Disability Care clinic provides comprehensive multidisciplinary care for patients from infancy to young adulthood who have multiple congenital anomalies, cerebral palsy, myelomeningocele and spina bifida, neurodegenerative diseases, neuromotor disorders and neurodevelopmental disorders.

The clinic includes a board-certified developmental-behavioral pediatrician, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and a robust care team of social workers, dieticians, nurses, physical therapists, an occupational therapist, a clinical pharmacist, and an orthotist. Patients from all over Southwest Michigan travel to the clinic with their families  and receive comprehensive, coordinated multidisciplinary care in one setting. Leaders at WMed Health identified the practice as one that had opportunities to improve patient experiences.

“What WMed Health decided to do was look at the workflows and see what efficiencies could be made so families wouldn’t have to wait several hours in the clinic,” said Dr. Neelkamal Soares, the medical school’s division chief of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics who served as the lead clinical faculty member on the project. “The lessons learned there can be used in all of our clinics.”

To help identify ways to improve, WMed Health collaborated with a group of industrial and entrepreneurial engineering students from Western Michigan University to analyze the Pediatric Multiple Disability Care clinic to determine ways to streamline processes and make it more efficient for patients. The students, Sean Fitzsimmons, Paul Geyer and Sam Olmstead, worked under Dr. Soares’ supervision and provided suggested improvements. Their work earned them national recognition through a Top 10 finish in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers’ 2019-2020 Outstanding Capstone Senior Design Projects Award competition.

Lukas Swoboda, a student in the medical school’s medical engineering program and an adjunct faculty member at WMU at the time of the project, managed the team and served as a liaison between the medical school and WMU.

“Our advisors and the clinic staff and providers really gave us great guidance on how to handle a project such as this,” Olmstead said. “We had to discover the root cause of certain inefficiencies and we had to find solutions. It gave us a lot of confidence moving forward as engineering students. Our recommendations are all backed up by evidence and data and we have great confidence in our solutions and our work conducted at the clinic.”

Steve Butt, dean of WMU’s College of Engineering, said having his students collaborate with WMed Health provides them the opportunity to look at efficiencies through several aspects, including office coordination, scheduling and medical processes.

“This is a great place for our students to be able to get experiences that they probably wouldn’t have gotten in a traditional internship and it’s bringing in skill sets that a lot of medical facilities don’t see as much now,” Butt said.

Dana Hammond, a faculty specialist at WMU who oversees the senior capstone project, said these WMU students sought out the opportunity at WMed Health instead of studying a manufacturing setting, which is the environment most students choose for the project.

“These partnerships allow the students to see possible career opportunities outside of manufacturing and how they can impact people’s lives,” Hammond said. “They can see how the work they are doing is helping patients, doctors and the clinics overall.”

Naren Kumar, the medical school’s assistant dean for Clinical Affairs, said WMed Health leaders were able to implement some of the students’ recommendations, including a cancellation and a no-show policy, something leaders had been working on before the project started. WMed Health leaders had to pause implementing other recommendations when care largely shifted to telehealth because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The group’s recommendations produced a noticeable change in the clinic’s weekly schedule so that families meet with multiple providers in about half the time that it used to take, Dr. Soares said.

“The importance of this collaboration is healthcare systems can have a very, very siloed approach,” Kumar said. “We were able to break down the silos so we could work and make the clinic efficient.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, providers at the Pediatric Multiple Disability Care clinic also have been able to use telehealth technology to see patients so they don’t have to travel.

“This keeps some fragile families at home while implementing a multidisciplinary process,” Dr. Soares said. “There are families who don’t have to make a choice -- Do I come in or not come in?”

Patients can be referred to the Pediatric Multiple Disability Care practice by contacting WMed Health’s referral department at 269.337.6289.