Recently, the daughter of an Australian man who’d had a severe stroke emailed a Kaleida Health physician in Buffalo, NY.
“He had been told, ‘There’s nothing that can be done. You should get your affairs in order.’ He wanted a second opinion and elected to come here,” says Jeannie Campese, supervisor of the health system’s new Access Center.
The physician referred them to the Access Center team. “And that’s where it began,” says Campese, who greeted the patient and family members at the airport to give them a warm welcome and ensure they found transportation to their hotel.
Even before the family arrived, Campese and her team acted as a liaison between the family and their providers by fielding late-night emails from the family due to the 16-hour time difference.
“The physician team was fantastic with responding to the inquiries and appreciated the collaborative effort,” she reports. The Access Center team members not only worked with the physician office, but also pharmacy, discharge planning, transportation, marketing, billing, hospital relations, and the hotel management to make the patient and family members’ visit as stress-free as possible.
The Access Center remained their contact point and continued to address any issues that arose. During the man’s recovery, his wife realized that she had run out of medication, which in Australia was an over-the-counter drug but required a prescription in the United States. “Something so small could have caused an enormous amount of stress for them,” says Campese. “We reached out to our resources, found the answer, and got the medication to her.”
The man had an excellent clinical outcome at the health system’s Gates Vascular Institute. “The family realized we weren’t just there for the patient, but for the whole family, and really appreciated our help,” says Campese.
Campese has stayed in touch with the family. “I feel they will be a part of my life forever,” she says.
Single point of contact
Previously, frustration with matters involving scheduling or billing gave patients a negative feeling about their entire healthcare experience.
Jennifer Nichols, vice president of revenue cycle operations at Kaleida Health in Buffalo, NY, says “The stay can be perfect,” says Nichols. “But, they have a bad customer service interaction over something like billing, and it affects their perception of their whole stay.”
The Access Center acts as a single point of contact for a patient.
“We moved our self-pay quote process into this team as well, mainly to wrap that super-high level of customer service around the patient,” reports Nichols.
In some cases, the team members continue to be the patient’s contact throughout the entire care episode, all the way through the billing process. “Or we may just have a quick conversation which connects the patient properly to the correct destination the first time, so they’re not transferred over and over,” says Campese.
Nichols notes that stress and anxiety over medical bills can affect a patient’s healing. “To the extent we can alleviate that, we are meeting our mission as a healthcare system,” she says.
