This document summarizes a project to assess the workload of Physician Office Assistants (POAs) in the Bone Marrow Transplant Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The project aims to track phone volumes for each of eight physicians and compare it to monthly patient volumes to determine which physician offices should be paired together to best distribute the workload among the POAs. The analysis found that the offices of Physicians C, D and E had high call volumes and should be split up and combined with other offices to ease the POA workload. Tracking phone volumes over time could help with future assessments of how best to pair physician offices.

1. Assessment of POA Workload
Bennett Charlie Stein
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• To implement and judge Physician
Office Assistant’s workload by
assessing the phone volume within the
Bone Marrow Transplant Service.
• There are about 20 Physician Office
Assistant’s within the Bone Marrow
Transplant Service.
• Each POA is responsible for
contacting, and communicating vital
information to patients regarding their
cancer statuses and procedures.
• One can better assess the POA
workload by tracking the amount of
calls per each physician that are
coming through the office and
comparing those results with the
outpatient volume per each physician.
• The significance of this project will
determine high volume offices and
assist in pairing certain offices
together to ease the POA workload.
• “Outpatient Activity Report”, this
report tallies the number of visits
each provider sees each month.
• What this report lacks is a link to
phone volume. This project will
showcase the monthly phone
volume, by analyzing the data and
comparing it to the outpatient
activity report to determine a
correlation between phone
volume, and patient volume to
more accurately assess the
workload of the POA’s.
• Keeping track of 8 physician’s
phone lines by tallying the
incoming calls per day for each
physician will help cluster all the
data.
• After comparing the phone
volume vs. the outpatient volume
per month, based off of this
analysis, one can better
recommend potential changes.
• Split the offices that are
currently paired to better
distribute the workload amongst
the Bone Marrow Transplant
Service within MSKCC.
• To split Physician C/D/E’s
offices and combine it with
other offices.
• To look at phone volume in
the future for assessing which
offices to pair together.
.
• I would like to thank my preceptor,
Bennett Charlie Stein, my mentor
Erin Cantrell- Martinez, and Ann
Marie Hill for their guidance
throughout my internship
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SIGNIFICANCE:
METHODOLOGY: OUTCOMES:
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