Access Management Journal - March 2009 - (Page 9) process, like many others, was practiced for no other reason than because that was the way it had always been done. Not finding any identifiable barriers to change, we began work on a new flow for these patients. Instead of requiring a patient’s signature at each visit, management now only requests signatures during the last trimester. Patients are preregistered in person for their delivery at any time within the last three months of the pregnancy. During pre-registration, staff requests patients to provide their current insurance and ID cards. After the staff verifies all demographic, financial, and contact information, patients sign consent forms and provide a password for HIPAA compliance. Along with the insurance and ID cards, staff scans the signed forms into the system, where patient information is available and used for future visits. As always, the office confirms the patient’s insurance benefits and eligibility at each new visit, using the information provided during pre-registration. As long as the patient is admitted for a pregnancy-related condition, she will not need to register in Patient Access again. Our team then developed a brochure that explained the new process and was distributed to all surrounding OB physicians’ offices. The physicians’ offices give the brochures to their patients approaching their final months of pregnancy. With the new process in place, patients can now go directly to the labor and delivery suite. When they arrive, nursing immediately notifies Patient Access staff, at which point the staff verifies that the patient completed the pre-registration process before assigning the patient an account number. A patient can have any number of new accounts during this period as long as the condition is pregnancy-related. As a result, there are no longer any delays in patient care. The new process eliminates the patients’ stress of waiting, allowing parents-to-be to focus on their new families. The results of this change have been phenomenal. Patients, physicians, and nursing staff adjusted quickly to the process. What was intended solely as a customer service improvement eventually became a significant timesaver for Access and nursing staff alike. A few very simple policy changes refreshed an outdated, inefficient process at absolutely no cost to the organization, becoming a viable marketing point for our maternity services. There is an opportunity every day to improve service in healthcare and Patient Access. Identifying inefficient, obsolete processes and making the appropriate changes will set your hospital apart as a leader in customer service, employee relations, and productivity. l Susan Franklin, CHAM, is Patient Access Coordinator at Halifax Regional Hospital in South Boston, Virginia. She has worked in Healthcare for 20 years, having began her career in patient care as a Cardiac Technician with a local Rescue Squad. Franklin spent many years as an office manager in a large, hospital-based outpatient rehabilitation facility before moving to Patient Access. 9 Volume 33, Number 1
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