Physicians Practice - March 2008 - (Page 32)

PATIENT RELATIONS asleep, it makes it a whole lot easier. And I get more thorough information that way as well. They have time to think about things like family history, talk to their spouses about it, and give me more information.” After an appointment is scheduled, DiDomenico veriﬁes the patient’s insurance online and collects any copay upfront. McAllister greets his there and feel more comfortable with us,” says Miller. “We get uniformly positive feedback from our patients regarding our online services.” But regardless of how many features your Web site may have, it’s only effective to the extent that your patients know about it and use it. When surveyed patients gave Miller’s practice low scores on their wait this staff person their lowest priority — hiring teenagers with no professional experience and poor social skills, and then giving them little or no training. Paula Comm, practice administrator for PRA Behavioral LLC, a psychiatry practice in Schaumburg, Ill., says that when she is training new staff, she uses a “mystery shopper” service that calls new employees and poses as a patient. Later, the “shopper” reports back to Comm on her new hire’s performance. “When someone is making that ﬁrst call for a psych appointment, you need to understand just how difﬁcult it is for them,” explains Comm. “Regardless of how unclear they may be, you have to have 10 times more patience when taking that call because it was so difﬁcult for the patient to make it.” 2. Front-desk intake procedures. “Be creative and hand problems over to the people who have to handle that situation and see what they can come up with.” TAP YOUR RESOURCES Vicki Bradford, consultant patients himself and escorts them to one of his three age-appropriate exam rooms. (He has separate rooms for infants, children aged 2-12, and teenagers.) His ofﬁce’s wireless network makes it easy for him to tote around his tablet PC, which he says is no more intrusive than a pen and clipboard. Miller’s much larger Family Practice Associates of Lexington (FPA) averages about 300 patient visits daily. But the practice’s Web site, www.fpalex.com, where patients can download all necessary forms and even complete and submit them online if they choose, enables FPA to offer optimal service right from the start. Patients can also request appointments and prescription renewals online, get selfcare information, and learn general background about the practice, its physicians, and its policies. “We ﬁnd that if we can drive patients to our Web site right at the beginning of their experience, then they’ll know what’s 32 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | MARCH 2008 time, she knew the group could move through office visits much faster if more patients took advantage of their Web site’s capabilities. “Frankly, we hadn’t done a good job educating our staff about what our site offered,” says Miller. So she held educational sessions in which she guided staff members through the site and its offerings. “Some of our staff had never been to our Web site and really had no idea what was there.” Once employees were more comfortable talking to patients about the site and its capabilities, surveyed patients began indicating positive experiences with their wait time. Finally, always keep in mind that when a new patient calls, the person who answers is her very ﬁrst contact with your practice, and it’s essential that that person is courteous, helpful, well-informed, and respectful. This may seem self-evident but it’s surprising how often practices make “Check-in is no longer a warm, fuzzy experience,” says Miller. “Today, it’s ‘I need to get all of this information about you, it needs to be accurate, we need to know what your insurance is and get all of those details now so we can get you in to see the physician as quickly as possible.’” If not well-monitored, Miller says the typical check-in process becomes a push-and-pull between the front and READ MORE ABOUT IT! Visit this story on PhysiciansPractice.com to learn more about how to optimize your practice’s patient service: •Download a PowerPoint presentation that can help you tap into the power of the Internet to improve patient services. •Get tips on what to do about low-scoring patient satisfaction surveys by typing “When You Don’t Satisfy” in our Search Articles box. •Boost your operational efficiency by making the most of simple IT solutions by typing “Back to Basics” in our Search Articles box. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://PhysiciansPractice.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - March 2008

Physicians Practice - March 2008 Contents The Bigger Picture: Try a Little Tenderness Second Opinion Letters Physicians Practice Pearls: The Value of First Impressions Noteworthy Cover Story: Your Complete Guide to Patient Service Billings & Collections: Rules to Code By The Administrators Desk: Selecting an EMR Technology: Learn to Love Your Nerd Ask The Experts Coding The Guide The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs The Great Practice Makeover: When Bad Things Happen to Good Practices Start It Up - NEW! The Law: Audits 101 In Practice: Do As I Say... Pretty Please? Healthonomics: Handling the Changes Wrought by Medicare D Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.