Robert E. Baird Jr., CEO of Dayton Physicians, LLC was recently quoted in The New York Times article, A Bipartisan Reason to Save Obamacare.

It used to be that a patient of the Dayton Physicians Network who wasn’t feeling well would call the office, leave a message — and wait.

“We generally couldn’t see that patient on the same day,” said Robert E. Baird Jr., chief executive of the Ohio network, which provides cancer treatment to 30,000 people each year. The message would sit on a desk till the end of the day, when phone calls were returned.

“The patient would wait the entire day, and end up giving up and going to the emergency room,” he added. “More often than not it would end up in an inpatient admission or an overnight.”

No longer. In 2013, the clinic hired oncology nurses to take patient calls and gave them protocols: For example, a chemo patient with a fever gets a same-day appointment and certain tests.

Baird said the program prevented 500 visits to the E.R. in 2016. “We were able to achieve Medicare’s ‘triple aim’: higher quality of care, lower cost and increased patient satisfaction,” he said.

To read the full article visit: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opinion/a-bipartisan-reason-to-save-obamacare.html?_r=0&referer

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