Access win! APPs saw 17,000 more patients in past 6 months

The numbers don’t lie. UC Davis Health advanced practice providers (APPs) saw 17,815 more patients in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2025, compared to the same period in fiscal year 2024.

Thanks to an Ambulatory Care access initiative implemented last July, more patients are receiving care from the organization’s APPs—nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified registered nurse anesthetists and more.

Mission: Improve access

Following a 2023 decline in Vizient scores around patient access, Ambulatory leadership and the Office of Advanced Practice Providers partnered with the Office of Strategy and Growth and the UC Davis Medical Group to pose this question: Do our APPs have capacity to help address the access problem?

The teams embarked upon a thorough review of the program. They established a benchmark: to be in line with national expectations, APPs should have the ability to spend at least 80% of their working hours engaged in direct patient-facing work.

But only 4% of APP’s hours were allocated appropriately at UC Davis Health. To work at the top of their scope, each APP needed a data-based plan for allocating their time and maximizing patient access.

Results

By July 1, 75% of the organization’s APPs had a plan, or “template,” that was consistent with national expectations.

The change is already producing incredible access results. Since their templates were upgraded, roughly 125 APPs are directly responsible for seeing more than 17,000 additional ambulatory patients. And nearly 30% of APPs are working at the top of their license, meaning they have template availability for at least 80% of their working hours, and are routinely booked at a 95% rate.

“APPs and physicians have always been essential partners in delivering health care,” said the initiative’s partner and Director of Ambulatory Advanced Practice Aaron Wright. “Ambulatory leaders like Dr. Aizenberg have worked to create an environment that embraces the APP ethic and scope of care and mobilizes these critical resources to help improve the lives of UC Davis Health patients.”

Dedicated partnerships

The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery was an early adopter of these APP expectations. Across multiple subspecialty lines, they have supported and encouraged APPs to oversee routine follow-up visits and new patient consults, and perform minor office procedures. This shift in practice has freed surgeons to focus on more complex cases and surgeries and allowed the department to focus on improving access through other expansion initiatives.

The CPG Primary Care group has also recently embraced the use of APPs, helping increase much needed access across the region.