Executive Summary
Patient access areas face significant challenges during unscheduled downtime and power outages. To avoid problems:
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Identify key lead positions during a downtime.
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Ensure all required stocked items for downtime are not depleted.
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Prepare downtime charts in advance.
Patient access staff members typically are well-prepared for standard downtime procedures. “It is the unscheduled downtimes that patient access needs to ensure are hardwired with the team,” says Catherine M. Pallozzi, CHAM, CCS, director of patient access at Albany (NY) Medical Center.
Due to unpredictable weather and an increase in facility construction to create more exam rooms, power outages sometimes are inevitable, says Ecco Sutherlin, director of the Nemours Access Center at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, DE. The Nemours Access group recently was moved to an area of the hospital that has an emergency generator.
“The space is also outfitted with red outlets that provide backup power to computers and the phone system in the event of an outage,” says Sutherlin.
Unscheduled outages can result in delays in registration and patient care. “There may be missed registrations for emergency department patients,” says Pallozzi. “This may result in a patient that can’t be billed, if the patient has never been seen at your facility previously.” She recommends these practices:
• Check downtime bins regularly to ensure all required stocked items are not depleted.
These items include registration forms, Medicare Secondary Payer forms, No Fault regulatory forms, and consent forms.
• Ensure downtime procedures are well-documented.
These downtime procedures include stocking the downtime forms, contacting the health information services department if a new medical record number is needed, and tracking all paperwork. “Our procedures are designed to identify key lead positions during a downtime,” says Pallozzi.
Prepare in advance
Randall Edwards, CHAA, patient access specialist at Conway (SC) Medical Center, says unscheduled downtime “is never a great experience. But a good plan can make it less stressful, with less errors.”
Accurate data collection is the biggest challenge patient access staff members face during a power outage or downtime, according to Edwards. “Having to hand-write all the data on a patient, such as insurance, address, next of kin, and reason for visit, takes more time per patient,” he says.
Because it takes extra time to do this, treatment delays are possible. “Another problem that can occur is incorrect demographics, resulting in errors in billing and medical records,” says Edwards.
Conway Medical Center’s patient access employees take these steps to prepare downtime charts ahead of time:
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Set up blank charts with account numbers and arm bands, and store them in each registration area.
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Create a list of downtime account numbers that can be used once the system comes back up.
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Take a screen shot of each page of the registration process.
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Put packets together, with the downtime numbers attached.
“Now when the downtime starts, all the patient access staff has to do is go grab a packet, fill out each page, and attach an armband to the patient,” says Edwards.
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Randall Edwards, CHAA, Patient Access Specialist, Conway (SC) Medical Center. Email: [email protected].
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Catherine M. Pallozzi, CHAM, CCS, Director, Patient Access, Albany (NY) Medical Center Hospital. Phone: (518) 262-3644. Email: [email protected].
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Ecco Sutherlin, Director, Nemours Access Center, Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, DE. Phone: (302) 298-7249. Email: [email protected].
