Hospital Access Management – November 1, 2011
November 1, 2011
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Revenue: POS collections surge from $100 monthly to $40,000
At St. Joseph East/St. Joseph Jessamine in Lexington, KY, collections in a newly opened women's hospital went from only about $100 in March 2010 to $15,000 a year later, and preadmissions collections, which were just $1,300 monthly, now range from $15,000 to $40,000. Stanford (CA) Hospitals and Clinics expects to collect $1 million more at point-of-service in 2012. -
Department expects $1 million increase
Anna Dapelo-Garcia, administrative director of patient access services at Stanford (CA) Hospitals and Clinics, anticipates point-of-service (POS) collections will increase by more than $1 million in 2012. -
Upfront collections set to increase by 130%
Members of the patient access staff at West Virginia University Hospitals East collected 110% more in 2010 than the previous year and are hoping to increase that by an additional 10% for 2011, reports Audrey Hodson, system director for patient access services. -
Simple ways registrars can satisfy patients
Patients at the Women's Hospital of Greensboro (NC) might have multiple visits during their pregnancies, which allows registrars to create an ongoing relationship, says Donald B. Conrad, patient access supervisor. -
Identify common goals: It's to your advantage
After a registrar immediately blamed a clinic because she wasn't able to verify a patient's demographics, Nicole Marsoobian, supervisor of pre-registration at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, sent her to the clinic for an hour. -
Keep patients happy when delays occur
During morning surgery rush times, registrars at Indiana University Health North Hospital in Carmel began monitoring the actual time patients were arriving in a database. -
Access wrongly blamed for clinical mistakes?
Has your access staff been wrongly blamed for mistakes, delays, or other problems related to clinical areas? To avoid this problem, patient access must "link themselves with clinical departments and establish a relationship a tight one," says Barbara Snodgrass, patient access manager at Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center in Gresham, OR. Snodgrass gives these recommendations: -
Delays? Be clear who is responsible
If an admitted patient is impatiently waiting for a bed to become available, and all he or she sees is access staff, it's easy to come to the wrong conclusion about who is really responsible for the delay. -
More payers require info on clinical review
Payers are frequently requiring additional clinical information from the provider or medical staff as to the medical necessity for a procedure or surgery, says Nan Olivieri, a supervisor at the Financial Clearance Center at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. -
Payers zeroing in on clinical necessity
Brian A. Todd, CHAM, manager of patient access staff development and training at Lourdes Health System in Camden, NJ, is seeing additional restrictions coming from companies that are doing clinical necessity checking. -
Avoid denials: Get it right at the start
When an interdisciplinary team including patient access, insurance verification, and radiology personnel was formed to reduce claims denials, "realizing where denials are coming from was definitely our first step," reports Brian A. Todd, CHAM, manager of patient access staff development and training at Lourdes Health System in Camden, NJ. -
Put a stop to common, costly claims denials
Keeping up with all the new payer requirements "is getting overwhelming," reports Margie Mukite, director of patient access at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, IL. Here are some trends the department is seeing: -
Will your patients have more access to laboratory results? It's proposed
As hospital compliance officers prepare for a proposed increase in patient access to medical records' information, another proposed rule increases access to laboratory results. Comments on the laboratory proposed rule must be received by Nov. 14. -
HHS reports complaints and breaches to Congress
More than 57,000 complaints of Privacy Rule violations were received by the Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) between April 2003 and December 2010. More than 250 large data breaches, defined as those involving the protected health information of more than 500 individuals, occurred in 2009 and 2010. -
Study says e-mail is source of data leaks
E-mail practices and mobile e-mail cause the most concern for data protection and regulatory compliance, according to the 830 individuals whose responses were included in a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and Zix Corp., an e-mail encryption service. -
Leon Rodriguez to head up OCR
Leon Rodriguez, the new leader of the government's HIPAA privacy and security enforcer, last served as chief of staff and deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. -
Timeline widget for HIPAA 5010
Beginning Jan. 1, 2012, providers must use the new HIPAA 5010 transaction standards to conduct certain administrative transactions such as claims, remittance, eligibility and others, but not all providers are ready for the transition to new standards, and that lack of preparedness could affect transition to ICD-10 as well.