Daily Huddles Overview and Process

Overview

A daily huddle session assists staff in knowing what is going on that day.

The first five minutes of the huddle session involve staff from across the clinic (medical, behavioral and dental). The focus is rapid updates for the day with an emphasis on the big picture across the community health center (CHC) site: staffing and support needs and any issues/changes that need to be addressed.

The second five to 10 minutes of the huddle session is the scheduled patient review run by the medical assistant (MA) with the clinician(s) to discuss the MA’s pre-visit “scrub” of the needs for the patient, the focus of the visit, and needed preventive health maintenance, augmented by any additional needs identified by the clinician.

Huddle #1: All-Clinic Huddle

WHY: To identify issues for the day and make sure all are aware of the big picture across the clinic. NOT patient specific.
WHEN: Occurs during the first five minutes of the clinic day for the entire clinic at 8 a.m. every day (at the top of the hour for the first work hour).

WHO ATTENDS THE ALL-CLINIC HUDDLE?

• Front office staff (at least one representative).
• Back office staff (MA and LPN).
• Clinician(s).
• Registered nurse (RN)/care manager.
• Behavioral health (one representative, if applicable).
• Dental (one representative, if applicable).

WHERE: Outside the MA/nursing station around the huddle white board (or another team area).

WHO RUNS THE HUDDLE? One staff member leads the questions, but the whole team contributes information.

WHAT IF ITEMS NEED MORE TIME? Some adjustments to the schedule or staffing may need to be made, or more information to be gathered or discussed. The team should identify who needs to connect with each other to resolve, and do so after the team completes the huddle. The huddle time should not be used to problem solve but to identify issues that need to be resolved or planned and assign accountability to get that accomplished.

Huddle #2: Review of Scheduled Patients/Pre-Visit Planning

WHEN: Follows the all-clinic huddle for five to10 minutes (i.e., 8:05 – 8:15 a.m.)

WHO: Clinician and MAs (could still include front desk or LPN and RN, as needed).

WHAT: Review the day’s patient list:

1. Action items for that day’s patients, including anything identified during the pre-visit scrub for screenings, immunizations, other health maintenance and needed referrals.
2. Rewind items, including a review of any further follow-up actions for patients seen the previous day.

To speed up the scheduled patient huddle: MAs should conduct the pre-visit scrub at least for that day and consider starting to look ahead to the next week’s visits at the end of each week.

Additional Tools: Weekly Huddle Tracker
If the huddle board is erased and updated each day, use this tracker to look across a full week for some or all of the key focus areas, if needed.

Phone call tracking notes: Tracking phone call statistics is helpful to understand phone volume and identify any front desk staffing as well as back office triage staffing needs. If the phone system is updated and able to capture further phone statistics, consider tracking the number of dropped calls.