Teach staff to fix collection mistakes
Don’t focus only on failures
Patient access leaders should explain to employees why collection is important to the hospital and instruct staff on how to correct mistakes.
• Give staff an opportunity to practice responses to negative reactions. Have one group represent patients and the other represent patient access employees.
• Teach staff to offer various payment options to patients.
If patient access employees know they’re expected to request money upfront, but don’t know how to go about doing so, they can become quickly frustrated.
"If their failures to collect are pointed out, but no instruction on how to correct their mistakes is given, the department suffers and morale lowers," says Aaron Robison, CHAA, a patient financial advocate at University of Utah Health Care in Salt Lake City.
Managers should provide opportunities to learn how to avoid errors and missed monies in the future, instead of just focusing on the failure, says Robison. They should also explain why collection is important for the hospital. "If I don’t understand why I’m asking for money from a patient, the patient is not going to understand why they should pay anything at the time of service," he says.
Robison uses role playing to put employees in the patient’s shoes. "That gives them a better understanding as to why someone might be so disagreeable about paying a bill," he says.
It also gives staff an opportunity to practice various ways of explaining why copays need to be paid upfront or why balances need to be paid off before receiving treatment. "Freely acting out situations where unhappy patients are unreasonable, in a safe environment away from any possible negative patient reactions, helps greatly when dealing with similar events," says Robison.
At a recent staff meeting, the team was split into equal groups. One group represented the patient, and the other represented patient access representatives. Staff members sat across from the "patients" and were given situations in which they would request money owed for services rendered. "What this taught me is that even if the patient has the saddest story to give, the patient access representative is always able to counter with an option," says Robison. Payment plans or other funding methods such as Medicaid might be suggested, for example.
"For me, that was the biggest takeaway," Robinson says. "You don’t always need to focus on one way of getting payment from a patient. There are always other options."
More confidence
Heather Bent, a patient access manager in the emergency department at Florida Hospital in Orlando, uses peer shadowing, role playing and skills labs to train her staff in collections.
"Lack of training breeds lack of confidence," she says.
Bent develops an individualized action plan for what the representative needs to work on specifically. Next, a follow-up session is scheduled to see how the individual has progressed.
"Being confident, and knowing how to answer patient questions, is key to making them trust that they are being given the correct information about their benefits and responsibility," she explains.
Training representatives on all of the different payment options is also key. "Otherwise, the patient may leave without a payment arrangement for their balance being set up, and the likelihood of obtaining the full balance decreases," says Bent.
Teaching patient access representatives the basics about insurance and getting them comfortable with the terminology is also essential, says Bent.
"Representatives that connect with the patient on a personal level and provide a top-notch patient experience tend to be the most successful in this role," says Bent. (See related stories on learning from top collectors, below, and how pre-service center staff members were trained to collect, p. 10.)
- Sebrena Johnson, Team Lead Specialist, Preservice Center, Cone Health Systems, Greensboro, NC. Phone: (336) 907-8522. Fax: (336) 907-8516. Email: [email protected].
- Aaron Robison, CHAA, Patient Financial Advocate, University of Utah Health Care, Salt Lake City. Phone: (801) 587-4483. Fax: (801) 585-1296. Email: [email protected].
