A patient wakes up with back pain. Do they call primary care? Physical therapy? Pain management? A surgeon? Every one of those doors is open, every one of them might be right — and any one of them can send that patient down a completely different path. 

One healthcare leader decided patients shouldn't have to guess.

"We wanted to come back to the drawing board to figure out, for our patients, the best way to coordinate this care," said Sean Nguyen, MHA, system director of the Interventional Pain Service Line at Ochsner Health. 

Nearly two years after launching a multidisciplinary spine care initiative, Nguyen said Ochsner is moving patients into care more quickly, collecting stronger patient satisfaction and Net Promoter Score data, and seeing more collaboration among clinicians. The work earned Nguyen the 2025 MGMA Harwick Innovation Award.

In a follow-up conversation with Daniel Williams, senior editor and host of the MGMA Insights Podcast, Nguyen explained what Ochsner has learned since the rollout and how practices can apply the same framework to other conditions.

Make the patient's first choice less consequential

Ochsner's model begins with a straightforward operating principle: Patients should receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time, no matter where they first enter the system. "When we think of back pain, some people might think physical therapy, some people might think pain management, some people might automatically think surgical options," Nguyen said. "There are multiple ways to enter large health systems or different specialists that really treat for back pain."

So rather than force patients to name the correct specialty, Ochsner built a pathway that coordinates the journey once the patient makes contact. "Regardless of how you enter into a large health system or how you get to care, you're getting timely care, appropriate care," Nguyen said.

That fix targets a stubborn industry problem. According to a July 1, 2025, MGMA Stat poll, 31% of medical groups reported that patient wait times had increased compared with the same period in 2024, citing growing demand, provider departures, retirements, and limited physician supply.

But a system that catches every patient, no matter where they land, isn't a ready-made solution. Before any platform can route a patient to the right place, the people delivering the care have to agree on what "the right place" even means.

Establish the clinical pathway before selecting the technology

Nguyen described Ochsner's solution as an equal mix of process and technology. The technology supports routing and communication, but clinicians first need agreement on how care should move.

"I think it's 50-50," Nguyen said. "It's not a magic bullet, or it's not a simple solution that cross-cuts so many different things."

Ochsner uses Epic platforms and decision trees to support the pathway, but the operational foundation is collaboration among advanced spine care clinicians, physical therapists, interventional pain teams, and physical medicine and rehabilitation teams. "They really, truly can just collaborate with one another, send an e-consult to one another, or even just pick up the phone and talk to one another," Nguyen said.

For medical practice leaders, that groundwork starts with a few practical decisions:

• Which presentations can each participating specialty evaluate?
• What criteria determine the best first destination?
• When can an electronic consultation replace another patient visit?
• What information must accompany every handoff?
• Who owns the next step when the initial treatment plan changes?

"What I love most is seeing how collaborative all of our clinicians are," Nguyen said. "Oftentimes in such large health systems, or even private practice groups, we tend to stick to our own specialty or our own focus areas."

Apply the framework to one reason for visit at a time

The project became far more scalable once Nguyen's team stopped treating it as a spine-specific fix. During storyboarding, Nguyen considered how a patient might respond to a skin rash. "Do you go to urgent care? Do you go to a dermatologist? Do you go back to your primary care?" he asked. "Really, there's no wrong answer."

The same routing problem shows up in hypertension, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, and other conditions treated across several departments. Practices don't need to redesign every access pathway at once. They can start with one reason for a visit that generates frequent transfers, incorrect scheduling, long waits, or repeated assessments, then map:

1. Every channel through which patients currently enter.
2. Every clinical team capable of evaluating the condition.
3. The information needed to determine urgency and destination.
4. The rules for transferring responsibility.
5. The exceptions that require escalation.

The resulting framework should be standardized enough to guide staff while staying flexible to the organization's size, specialties, technology, and patient population. "It's going to be uniquely different for each [patient] and each practice," Nguyen said. "You can add your own flavors to it and make it worthwhile for yourself."

Give AI a defined operational job

Ochsner is applying AI across call centers, access points, clinical documentation, and payer-facing workflows, with each use case aimed at a specific source of administrative friction: 

• Ambient listening can ease documentation demands and protect clinicians' time with patients. 
• AI agents can review payer policies and flag whether documentation contains what's required for prior authorization. 
• Access tools can power decision trees and route patients more consistently.

Many practices are prioritizing the same areas. A February 2026 MGMA Stat poll found that scheduling was the leading front-office target for AI and automation, cited by 31% of respondents, followed by calls at 27%, registration and eligibility at 23%, and prior authorization at 16%. 

Nguyen urged leaders to weigh whether a product fits the larger workflow rather than simply automating one isolated task. The right partner solves a defined problem, integrates with existing systems, and safeguards patient information. "We're trying to find the right thing or the right solutions for the right situations," he explained. The goal is to avoid adding "another bot at the end of the day to create more chaos into the work that we do."

Measure coordination, not just volume

Ochsner tracks timely access, patient satisfaction, Net Promoter Score results, quality measures, and movement through the system. Nguyen counts clinician connectivity as a meaningful result of its own. The infrastructure lets clinicians coordinate care even when they work hours apart, using electronic consultations, direct conversations, and shared workflows to reduce the importance of physical proximity.

"We've built an infrastructure to promote more connectivity and more support," Nguyen said. "How do we use technology in a much more intentional way?"

Ochsner's next step is to strengthen quality scores and extend the framework to additional conditions. Nguyen and his colleagues will share the model during their session "Blowing Up the Front Door: Reinventing Access and Redesigning Care" at MGMA's Annual Conference in San Antonio. 

"Some of those doors we absolutely need," Nguyen said, "but some of those doors are also antiquated or have not kept up with the times." 

The demolition, it turns out, is the easy part. The harder work — the part Ochsner has spent two years on — is making sure every remaining door leads somewhere worth going.

Resources

• MGMA Annual Conference 2026 (September 27-30, San Antonio)  | Sean Nguyen's session: "Blowing Up the Front Door: Reinventing Access and Redesigning Care"  | Tuesday, September 29, 1:30 p.m. CT
• Connect with Sean Nguyen on LinkedIn
• Listen to Sean Nguyen's previous MGMA Insights Podcast episode discussing his Harwick Innovation Award-winning work
• MGMA Podcast Network

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