The Fast Track to Fertility program can significantly reduce the time to treatment

The Fast Track to Fertility program can significantly reduce the time to treatment

When you're struggling to get pregnant, every second that passes feels precious. That makes it easy to get discouraged: 65 percent of those who seek fertility treatment eventually stop treatment, most because of stress. That's why Penn Medicine recently launched a telemedicine-driven program aimed at treating patients faster and starting treatment sooner. The Fast Track to Fertility program shortened the time between patients' first contact for help and their first treatment by half - and put them on the path to parenthood about a month and a half earlier, according to a study published in NEJM Catalyst by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine.

The program not only shortened the average time it took new patients to receive their first treatment (from 97 to 41 days), but also enabled more new patients to access fertility treatment, increasing the number by 24 percent in the year it was introduced as the standard of care at Penn Medicine. At a time when one in eight couples in the United States suffers from infertility, Fast Track to Fertility enabled more than 1,000 new patients to begin treatments to help them conceive.

Most people who seek fertility treatment have been trying to conceive for at least a year, so there is a lot at stake emotionally and they really want to get started as soon as possible. Our results show that this program can significantly reduce time to treatment, opening the door to so many more people. These results show that this approach can make a real difference to people’s lives.”

Anuja Dokras, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and co-founder of Fast Track to Fertility, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and chair of gynecology at the Women's Health Service Line

The demand for fertility treatments has steadily increased since their introduction and has reached a point where fertility clinics often have to wait long periods of time for new patients. Fast Track to Fertility, launched through the Innovation Accelerator at Penn Medicine's Center for Health Care Innovation, aims to speed things up by deploying a relatively small team of advanced practice providers to deliver efficient telemedicine-based initial visits to new patients as quickly as possible. This visit also gives patients the opportunity to enroll in an artificial intelligence-based text messaging program that will help them complete the complex fertility exam quickly and as smoothly as possible.

“This system ensures that a patient's journey begins as soon as they contact us,” said study lead author and Fast Track to Fertility co-founder Suneeta Senapati, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology. "Both partners in a couple will need to undergo a physical, which may include blood tests, ultrasounds, x-rays, semen analysis, and more. Some parts of this depend on the menstrual cycle, making it a time-sensitive process." Making it as easy as possible to work through quickly – with minimal confusion – is invaluable.”

Initial pilots (which used human copywriters rather than artificial intelligence to test the system) reduced the wait time to see new patients by 88 percent from their first contact with the practice, bringing the average wait time to just four days. And during these initial pilots, no patient needed to call the practice to clarify next steps, compared to a quarter of patients who did not participate in the program.

In 2021, when the most recent analysis was conducted, Fast Track to Fertility was expanded to become the standard of care throughout Penn Medicine's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In addition to halving the time to treatment and increasing new patients, they also saw a decrease in appointment "no-shows" - including those who unexpectedly missed their appointment or had to cancel late - from 40 to 20 percent, a particularly important measure.

“Any time there is a no-show, we are unable to refill that appointment due to the exact schedule required for this type of care,” Dokras said. “So if we can reduce the number of no-shows, that means more people can get the care they’re looking for to start their families.”

Satisfaction among both patients and the advanced practice providers operating the system was also high. And researchers hope the system can be expanded to support patients throughout their fertility journey.

"These care models do not replace our clinical workforce, as human interaction remains critical to the doctor-patient relationship and care delivery. Rather, they improve efficiency - while maintaining personalized care - for both patients and their care teams to meet growing demand." Demand for fertility services," Senapati said. "Ultimately, this allows my colleagues and I to do more of what we came to do in this field: helping people get pregnant and bring their babies home."

Source:

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Reference:

Senapati, S., et al. (2022) The Fast Track to Fertility Program: Rapid Cycle Innovation to Redesign Fertility Care. NEJM catalyst. doi.org/10.1056/CAT.22.0065.

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