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Putting the "know" before the "why" for patient access employees was the focus at Stevens Hospital in Edmonds, WA, during implementation of its procedure for distributing the revised "Important Message From Medicare," says Evita Armijo, patient access manager.
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When it comes to the crucial arena of charge capture — making sure that providers are paid at the appropriate level for all services rendered — it's all about "the right charges and the right resource putting the charges in," says Gala Prabhu, a New York City-based senior manager for Accenture.
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A recent announcement by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that it will no longer pay for care required because of hospital error has implications for patient access.
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Education challenges faced by the organizers of a pilot project in Nogales, AZ, aimed at emergency department (ED) "frequent flyers" involved secondary gains experienced by patients who didn't participate and the cultural phenomenon known as "yes means no."
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Cell phones replaced land-based pagers at Richland Hospital in Richland Center, WI, when the area was hit by severe storms and flooding in late August.
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Putting in place technology and processes to determine the financial resources of self-pay patients at the point of service (POS) has helped increase collections, reduce bad debt, and ensure accuracy of patient identification at Southern Regional Medical Center (SRMC) in Riverdale, GA, says Tracey Frederick, senior systems analyst.
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Patient access specialists at Texas Health Resources (THR) hospitals are learning their job "as it was meant to be learned," one of the many positive outcomes related to implementation of a centralized intake center at the Arlington-based health system, says the center's director, Jeff Ferrell.
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While the classic patient access mantra has become "garbage in, garbage out," managers themselves often fail to heed it, says Michael Friedberg, FACHE, CHAM, director, patient access services at Armanti Financial Services in Bloomfield, NJ.
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The average time spent in emergency departments rose in 2006, but so did patient satisfaction, according to a recent report by Press Ganey Associates. Based on the firm's patient surveys in 1,500 hospitals, patients spent an average of four hours in the ED, 18 minutes more than in 2005.
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The great majority of U.S. health care dollars are spent supporting the chronically ill, yet the traditional focus of hospital care is on the "episode of illness," notes Bob Whipple, RNC, CCM, CCS, MHA, a Boston-based senior management consultant with ACS Healthcare Solutions.
