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The ED verification staff, registration staff, case managers, emergency nurses, and a group of patients joined together and brainstormed ideas at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, MI, with the goals of reducing denials, obtaining a better understanding of each other's roles, and obtaining accurate demographics, says Tina Nadrasik, patient access manager over the ED. Here are three areas that were identified:
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When Joan S. Braveman, director of patient access and financial services at Tallahassee (FL) Memorial HealthCare (TMH), started point-of-service collections in her department about five years ago, she encountered a lot of resistance.
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Patients might have bought an insurance policy with lower premiums and higher deductibles, but lack understanding of what those mean. This part of the job is one of the hardest for patient access staff, according to Joan S. Braveman, director of patient access and financial services at Tallahassee (FL) Memorial HealthCare.
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Joan S. Braveman, director of patient access and financial services at Tallahassee (FL) Memorial HealthCare, says that her department has put a "very liberal, but very fair, uninsured payment policy in place."
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If some particularly dismal copay collection data came to your attention, chances are you'd want to scrutinize it carefully before presenting this to senior leaders.
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Two major areas of concern for the switch to ICD-10 are medical necessity and preauthorizations, according to Susan Hoyle, CCS, coding manager at Mission Hospitals in Asheville, NC.
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Offering large salary increases or promotions is probably not an option to improve retention, even for your most irreplaceable staff members. However, it's possible that staff might jump at the chance for a lateral move within the patient access department, according to Sherrie Woodmancy, service director for patient billing and financial services at University of Utah Health Care in Salt Lake City.
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The secret to any process improvement in the ED is the relationship that your registration staff have with the clinical staff and management, according to Tina Nadrasik, patient access manager in the ED at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, MI.
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As self-pay patients continue to rise in number, you'll need effective strategies for screening these individuals for charity eligibility.
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Caffeine. You know how you feel when you are one cup of coffee over the line? Everything is jumbled and irritating, and you just want to lash out at someone! What an uncomfortable feeling that is, for you and for those around you (as I have been told...). We see it with the surgeons, staff, anesthesia, front desk staff seemingly everyone is wired just a bit too tight.
