Managing panel size and the scope of the practice allows a team to balance supply and demand and ensures that they can do today’s work today. Panel size is the number of unique patients for whom a care team is responsible; it is a measure of the equity of the work. Panel size can be measured by calculating the number of unique patients seen by a specific provider within a specific time frame — usually the past eighteen months. An appropriate panel size is an outcome of an optimal access system, not a goal or end in itself. The goal is good panel management: clinicians and their care teams being responsible to, and caring for, a designated population of patients.

From the physician’s perspective, having an equitable and appropriate panel size ensures that he or she will be able to offer good care in a timely way to a reasonable number of patients. Panel size drives demand. An agreed-upon panel size range for each primary care provider ensures the physician who is working to improve his or her access that the demand for services will not exceed the supply.

Another way to evaluate panel size is to use "average visits per week" as a proxy of the clinic's work. Determine the number of visits per week that can be supported based on current supply, and use this as a proxy for the total of visit and non-visit work. As the clinic adopts a model of care based on continuous healing relationships, non-visit work will increase and clinics will need to adjust panel size targets.

Related Measures

Individual Panel Size