Patient Access

From airlines to cafés to car manufacturers, businesses across America are scrambling to respond to the challenge of COVID-19. In healthcare, services are being put on pause to protect staff and patients on the pandemic’s front line, leaving health systems to contend with gaps in reimbursements and exhausted cash flows. The problem lies in the sheer number of human touchpoints involved in the typical patient experience: scheduling, paperwork, waiting rooms, treatment, payment…all that in-person interaction just isn’t realistic in the current climate. Digital and mobile technology could be the answer. While digital communication platforms have been growing steadily over the last decade, they’re now a life raft for many providers as COVID-19 forces much of the patient journey online. Megan Zweig, director of research and marketing at Rock Health, says investments in virtual care have already exceeded $3 billion this year: "Without COVID, the story would have continued from last year as this was a healthy, growing space with a lot of momentum behind it. That momentum has turned into incredible urgency and demand for communication, testing, monitoring, care – all of those things done at a distance." This trajectory will likely continue beyond the immediate crisis, as providers prepare for a possible second wave later in the year and patients become accustomed to remote and mobile options. Providers that take advantage of these digital solutions now will be better positioned to optimize the patient journey in a post-COVID world. What could the digital patient journey look like beyond COVID-19? A digital healthcare experience can offer patients more convenience and flexibility while protecting revenue for providers, in the following ways: Scheduling appointments when it suits The first bump in the road for many patients is scheduling their appointment. With many in lockdown juggling home-schooling and home-working, it’s not always convenient to call during office hours. A patient scheduling platform lets the patient book their appointment whenever suits, using the channel they prefer. Before the pandemic, Benefis Health System found 50% of patients chose to book after hours, including for urgent care. We can expect this to increase as even more patients are nudged online. As the threat of COVID subsides, a massive influx of patients will also want to reschedule postponed visits. Automated patient scheduling will reduce the pressure on call centers and offer a more efficient consumer experience. Reducing registration gridlock with automation Patient access is often rife with avoidable stress – queues, unnecessary forms and manual data entry, resulting in costly errors and repeated work. Instead, providers can streamline the process by allowing pre-registration tasks to be completed online, and automating patient access with a mobile intake experience. Completing as many tasks as possible outside of the provider’s office will help minimize face-to-face contact, keeping everyone safe. Opening up access to telehealth There’s no getting around the fact that most care needs to be delivered in person. Telemedicine offers an effective way for patients to seek care from the safety of their own home. Video calls can be used for general consultations, remote monitoring of patients with respiratory conditions, and even supporting patients with chronic conditions to adhere to care plans. As the government allocates $20 million to support access to telemedicine in response to COVID-19, up to 54% of patient encounters are expected to take place remotely in the near future. Many of these patients will choose to stick with telemedicine, even when in-person options return. [Remember to check out our free COVID-19 Resource Center, where you can get free access to telehealth payer policy alerts to help avoid payment denials and delays.] Making contactless payment the easy option Contactless payment through apps such as Apple Pay and Venmo are gaining popularity as consumers try to avoid exchanging cash and cards. But can it be used in hospitals? In short, yes. Not only does Experian Health’s Patient Financial Advisor offer patients a way to make secure – and socially distanced – payments, it allows providers to give a breakdown of estimated costs using real-time information. Patients get updates on their mobile or through their patient portal. These digital alternatives not only offer a more convenient patient experience, they can also allow providers to collect payments faster and in full. Contact us to find out how digital health solutions can help your organization adapt to the new normal, and provide a better patient experience now and beyond COVID-19.

The term “digital front door” is one of the biggest buzz words in healthcare, and thanks to COVID-19, we can expect to see it even more. Already, according to an Accenture survey, 77 percent of patients believe the ability to book, cancel, or change an appointment online is important. Now, with social distancing and stay at home orders in place, offering digital tools for engagement is more important than ever. But what exactly makes a strong “digital front door” and what does it take to create one? What precisely does a digital strategy need in order to better engage and retain patients? There are a lot of thoughts about what the digital front door looks like, from pricing transparency to ratings and reviews, reputation management, patient registration, and more. We know patients today are seeking greater transparency from their entire healthcare experience. Yet each of the qualities above reflect more of a digital billboard than an actual front door. After all, the front door needs to be a pathway to see a physician or access care; it must actually “open.” A true digital front door will do the following: Enable omni-channel access. Improving access begins with offering more channels for patients to find the care they need – a necessity today in the midst of COVID-19. Digital scheduling drives patient access, plain and simple, whether it be through call centers, automated outreach, or online self-scheduling. Omni-channel access not only opens the door for patients experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, giving them a fast and easy way to connect with a provider, but will be key for the post-COVID world when patients begin to reschedule those appointments that have been cancelled or deferred. Engage patients. Patients want convenience when it comes to accessing care. Now, more than ever, patients look online for information and expect to find what they need easily and quickly. Making service information available online, such as COVID testing, is an obvious first step. Allowing consumers to simply and efficiently book the care they need online will lead to increased engagement, as well. Improve productivity. More than half of all patients prefer to schedule outside of business hours. Digital scheduling can enable that, increasing appointments while improving provider workflow, freeing up staff to focus on other activities. This will prove critical as providers brace for an influx of patients seeking to reschedule appointments that have since been cancelled or deferred due to COVID-19. Additionally, automated reminders help improve patient show rates while data-driven practices help refine scheduling logistics.  Increase revenue. Providing better, more efficient access, increases the number of patients coming into a practice – which means more revenue. And today, as a result of heroic efforts to serve communities impacted by COVID-19, providers are more strapped for revenue than ever before. With access to digital and mobile solutions, providers can attack revenue loss from two sides –attracting new patients and retaining current ones. Drive higher patient satisfaction. Faster, easier access to healthcare equals better satisfaction with the process of accessing healthcare, with the provider organization, and with the provider. And, if you really want a crowd pleaser that can also generate revenue, automated business rules and scheduling protocols are a must have.It’s the combination of convenience and effectiveness that keeps them coming back for future care needs – coming back, of course, through the digital front door. Learn more about how Patient Scheduling can help to unlock your organization’s digital front door.

The novel coronavirus pandemic crisis of 2020 has plunged the healthcare system, and frankly the whole economy, into a dark place. It will take time, and likely a lot of time, to overcome what may end up being several months of a national shut down. Eventually people will re-emerge from isolation, business will resume a new normal, and healthcare providers will turn their attention to the revenue generating services that they temporarily halted, as well as the patients who delayed care for a myriad of conditions. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently published “phase one” re-opening recommendations that recognized in some areas the possibility of non-COVID-19 care is already being considered. There will be an overflow of pent-up demand and provider organizations need to position themselves now to be ready. One consideration, with many health systems now feeling the squeeze and not being able to re-deploy staff to serve in the crisis, is to use some of those resources and prepare for the next phase.  Here are few strategies to get ahead of the curve, if you will, as it flattens: Reschedule appointments – Literally hundreds of appointments– for some providers, thousands – that had been cancelled or delayed will require rescheduling. Deploying an omni-channel scheduling platform now can relieve the pressure of that future volume in several ways: Online scheduling can guide patients to the right care with rules automation, allowing patients to accurately self-book and reducing call center volume.Enable patient scheduling via automated outreach messages sent via text message or IVR. (For example, you can target all those who need to reschedule, reaching them via text campaigns and reducing call center workload).Reduce training time with a call center scheduling solution. Agents (such as temps hired to handle the influx of appointments) can be trained in a matter of hours to schedule and book appointments accurately.Harden your telehealth offering – This crisis has shown the necessity for virtual visit technology during a pandemic; however, its value won’t disappear as the crisis fades. Telehealth is destined to become a staple of healthcare delivery. Restrictions have been lifted and the technology has proven practical, convenient and efficient, paving the way for broad acceptance. But what are the digital complements that can be paired with telehealth to harden the solution and make the offering a robust tool into the future? While many providers are now able to offer this type of virtual care, scheduling across a variety of specialties has become a challenge. A  tool that guides patients and call center agents to the right provider across all services, including telehealth, is going to be critical in the months ahead to maintaining scheduling efficiency and delivering an optimal patient experience.Establish your digital front door – Patients aren’t going to want only clinical telehealth options; the whole spectrum of patient-provider interaction is shifting. Scheduling, registration, payments - all these are going to see increased demand for digital self-service. This gets patients out of the waiting room and removes the need to swipe or insert a credit card or use a POS kiosk. Patients, who are consumers, want to use their mobile devices and they will form lasting opinions of those services enabling – or restricting – their ability to do that.Collections optimization – Right now the focus is on caring for patients, as it should be; however, in order to continue operating, providers must collect for the services rendered. Putting in systems that automate collections processes and reduce the human resources necessary to bring in revenue will to be key to capitalizing on the rush of non-COVID-19 care that will soon be required. These are just a few of the ways that healthcare providers can deploy digital technology to prepare and turn this looming challenge into opportunity. The reality is that managing patient engagement and collections through this next phase is critical to the U.S. healthcare ecosystem’s recovery. Organizations that emerge stronger will be those that prepare now and are ready when the time comes. Find out more about patient engagement solutions that can help you respond now and prepare for the future.

    In today’s fast-evolving healthcare industry, consumer expectations are changing. Individuals are footing an increasing portion of medical bills, so they’re paying closer attention to their healthcare options. And with digital technology enabling choices for everything from where to bank to what to eat (and even who to date!), patients are now expecting a similar consumer-centric experience when it comes to their health. But what exactly are they looking for? Providers should respond to this rising consumerism with two things: convenience and engagement. Many patient tasks are time-consuming, tedious and repetitive. The use of outdated technology draws unfavorable comparisons with the intuitive apps used in other industries. And all too often there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. The opportunities to improve the patient experience are huge. As the competition for consumer business heats up, providers should look for ways to step up their patient engagement strategies to attract new consumers and inspire loyalty among existing members. Consider how to make it as easy as possible for patients to access the care they need, whether that’s through frictionless scheduling, simplified registration processes or proactive communication about free transportation options. Data-driven technology and automation can help drive improvements in both convenience and engagement. Here, we look specifically at how automation could help you meet changing consumer expectations in the world of patient access. How can automation make patient access more convenient for consumers? Patients hate administrative and financial tasks that take them away from family, friends and other priorities. When looking for an easy, streamlined patient access experience, they might ask: Can I make appointments online? Can I get an out of pocket estimate for my cost of care? And can I price-shop my services? Can I do my pre-registration work before I show up for my appointment? Can I manage my bills and all my health information online? Can I do all of this from my mobile or tablet device at a time when it’s convenient for me? Automation can help you deliver against these expectations and remove stress and hassle from many patient access tasks. By using consumer data and technology to trigger the next stage in the process, you can help patients navigate the complex healthcare system, making registration, billing and payment more convenient. For example, online self-scheduling lets patients plan appointments when it suits them. You’ll increase appointment and referral rates, improve call center efficiency, reduce no-shows and enhance the overall patient experience. Or how about offering patients a one-stop-shop for managing all their healthcare admin, through a digital patient portal? This makes it much quicker and easier for them to get price estimates, set up payment plans, update insurance information and stay on track with appointments and treatment plans. By automating the registration and billing processes, you’ll improve self-pay collections and decrease bad debt. If you can say “yes” to the above questions, you’ll be making life easier for your patient access staff too. Reliance on manual data entry processes means staff are constantly battling bottlenecks and dealing with avoidable errors and duplicate records. Not only does this waste employee time, it opens the door to major safety issues and lost revenue: patient identification errors can cost up to $2,000 per patient and are associated with a third of denied claims, costing the average hospital $1.5 million each year. How can automation support better patient engagement? This isn’t just about removing obstacles or introducing speedy tools. You can use automation to improve patient engagement at various touchpoints during the patient access process. Consumer data paired with automation can help you nudge patients by text or email to make appointments, so they don’t miss out on important checks. You can deliver personalized updates, reminders and offers, so your patients feel taken care of and know exactly what’s happening throughout their healthcare journey. Using lifestyle, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data from the highest quality sources, you can also use automation to segment your audience into groups based on all sorts of variables, in order to communicate with them about the right services, at the right time. Now is the time to leverage technology for a better patient access experience. It’s clear that awareness of the potential ROI in automation is growing. Still, many providers have only scratched the surface when it comes to integrating automation within their revenue cycle operations. Given that 66% of patients would switch providers for more convenient access, it makes sense to consider how you can leverage technology to simplify all sorts of patient tasks, from pre-registration to payments. Learn more about how automation could help your organization create a better patient access experience for consumers.

Flu season came early to Australia this year, with more influenza hospitalizations compared to last. And 93% of reported cases were the more dangerous Influenza A strain. If you’re wondering what this has to do with your healthcare organization, the answer is that generally speaking, flu season in the U.S. often mirrors what’s just happened in the southern hemisphere. In short, get ready. The number of cases in Australia has U.S. health officials gearing up for a challenging flu season over the next few months. Although flu activity is currently low in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expect this to increase in the coming weeks, particularly as Australia experienced an unusually severe early flu season this year. For healthcare organizations, this will likely translate into extra demands on staff and services, crowded emergency rooms and higher rates of admission. Your organization most likely already has a robust winter health contingency plan in place. Still, there may be new ways to use data analytics and technology to increase efficiency, so you’re as prepared as possible. Are you ready? Three ways technology can help providers prepare for flu season Create a flu-preparedness patient engagement strategy At this time of year, patients can be exposed to many misconceptions about flu and how to prevent it. A helpful way to make sure your patients are informed about how to protect themselves against illness is to communicate the risks, encourage vaccinations and promote preventative behavior. Consumer data can help you to deliver personalized messages to patients in a time and format that suits them best, segmenting your patient groups according to risk status. Whether you’re contacting them through their patient portal, email or in-person touchpoints, a tailored approach will create a more reassuring patient experience, while allowing you to target your information campaign to the right people at the right time. Promote telehealth services More hospitals and pharmacies are turning to telehealth systems to help manage flu season. Patients can log on to watch information videos and have virtual consultations with physicians without being exposed to germs in the doctor’s office. Reducing the number of patients showing up to access services in-person can help relieve pressure on services, while minimizing the risk of infection spreading. Check in with your telehealth provider to make sure everything is in place to provide your patients with the virtual care and advice they need. Streamline patient registration With more patients likely to be coming through the doors, the last thing you need is a time-consuming registration process hindered by lengthy and often unnecessary eligibility checks. Automating registration, financial clearance and other patient access processes can eliminate many manual tasks, save time and reduce errors so there are fewer denied claims. At such a busy time of year, your patients, staff and bottom line will thank you! How one Los Angeles hospital streamlined patient registration to manage flu season  Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles worked with Experian Health to streamline patient registration and insurance verification. With a high-traffic emergency department and limited front-line staff, manual quality assurance and multiple payer website checks were creating bottlenecks and inaccuracies that took up more time to fix. Using Coverage Discovery, the hospital was able to improve efficiency in insurance verification, while Registration QA saved time in validating patient and payment information. In addition, eCare NEXT® helped automate workflows and generate data insights for further improvements—integrating seamlessly into the hospital’s existing Cerner® system. Speaking about the improvement made ahead of last year’s flu season, Lori Westman, patient access manager at MLKCH, said: “We have a lot of returning patients to our emergency room, so once we check that patient in, their eligibility automatically runs in the background and our staff doesn’t have to go into another website to check their eligibility. This has saved us two to three minutes of our registration time.” “We average about 300 patients every 24 hours. Heading into flu season, they’re expecting to hit a 400-per-day volume, so the fact that we can take off two to three minutes at least on half of our registrations is going to speed up the work for the team that much faster, to have a turnaround time that much better for more patients to come through.” Find out more about how we can help you streamline your Patient Access processes, so your organization is fighting fit for this year’s flu season.

Experian Health announced it has acquired MyHealthDirect, a SaaS-based company specializing in digital coordination solutions in scheduling. We interviewed Jason Considine, Experian Health general manager of patient engagement and collections, to learn more about the acquisition, as well as opportunities arising in healthcare due to the rise in consumerism. What led to Experian’s interest in MyHealthDirect and the ultimate acquisition? We’ve had a relationship with MyHealthDirect for several years. Experian Health has been reselling the MyHealthDirect solution since 2017, and we’ve long recognized that their platform’s digital care coordination capabilities would be a great match with our existing solutions. MyHealthDirect's platform links patients with the right providers, offering online scheduling tools and referral coordination to ensure more timely access to care for patients. These solutions have proven to increase appointment and referral rates, improve call center efficiency, reduce no-shows and enhance the overall patient experience. By coupling this technology with our Experian data, we can ensure patients are getting the care they need in the management of chronic diseases and wellness programs. This acquisition evolves our core revenue cycle management capabilities and helps us make gains in the patient engagement space with all-new innovative offerings. You referenced “digital care coordination.” What does this mean and how does it apply to healthcare? Digital care coordination, as it applies to the MyHealthDirect suite, is comprised of self-scheduling, call center, referral coordination and automated outreach solutions, making it easier for people to access healthcare. By combining these scheduling solutions with Experian’s existing digital patient engagement solutions, we can deliver a seamless consumer-centered experience – from serving up an estimate, to streamlining the registration process, to providing consumers with the ability to pay their healthcare bills via multiple channels. Today’s healthcare consumer expects a turnkey, personalized, on-demand experience. When you think about the best engagements we all enjoy in retail, financial services, travel and entertainment, the expectation is that the healthcare experience should be no different. We need to arm consumers with the ability to streamline their healthcare and make it easier for them to access care. Why is the scheduling component so key in the overall patient journey today? Scheduling is the one of the very first steps of the care journey and booking an appointment has traditionally been a poor experience. Common frustrations include not being able to reach the provider, finding out that no appointments are available, or being forced into a time-consuming three-way call between the health plan and provider. Without fast and easy access, patients may not be able to get the care they need. When healthcare plans use technology to better connect patients to needed care, quality scores for patient experience rise and efficiencies are gained. Can you give us an example on how more automated approach to scheduling could lead to better health outcomes for the consumer? Sure. Take for instance an individual who is living with diabetes. It is important for this person to have regular check-ins with their provider to monitor their condition and adjust care plans accordingly. If this person is challenged to see their provider, or doesn’t have regular appointments booked, they could run the risk of becoming an unhealthy diabetic, being faced with additional health challenges. By tapping into digital appointment scheduling, a provider or payer could create an automated outreach plan to make the scheduling hassle-free. Appointments could be streamlined and scheduled directly on the phone via IVR or text, and appointment reminders can be delivered. How do you see providers responding to the rise in healthcare consumerism? It’s no secret that healthcare costs are rising, and consumers are increasingly bearing more of those costs. Providers, therefore, are telling us they need to deliver a better experience. They are asking for digital technologies to gain rich insights into consumer behavior and then adjusting their care delivery plans accordingly. They recognize that consumers have a choice on where to take their healthcare business, so they need to compete. In the case of scheduling, MyHealthDirect conducted some research and revealed 66% of patients would switch providers for more convenient access. In that same study, 77% of patients think the ability to book, change or cancel appointments online is important. My point? Those providers and payers investing in on-demand tools to interface with their consumers will win, simplifying many of the administrative tasks associated with healthcare. — Learn more about scheduling solutions.

Over the last twenty years, American hospitals have provided more than $620 billion of uncompensated care for cases where no payment was made by a patient or insurer. This includes financial assistance, where hospitals provide care at a reduced cost for those unable to cover their full bill, and bad debt, where patients have not applied for financial assistance and cannot or will not pay their bill. Despite extensions to Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured people in the United States is still approaching 30 million. For these often-vulnerable populations, safety-net hospitals provide essential care regardless of the patient’s ability to pay. But safety-net hospitals are themselves under increasing financial pressure, experiencing more than double the uncompensated care costs of other acute hospitals. And when safety-net hospitals are closed down or struggle to meet demand, nearby hospitals must cover the shortfall in care. It’s a problem for everyone. A Kellogg Insight report found that when more people are uninsured, hospitals bear the cost by providing uncompensated care to the tune of $900 for each additional uninsured patient. Craig Garthwaite, Assistant Professor of Strategy, describes hospitals as “insurers of last resort”: “People are still going to the emergency room and they are still receiving treatment – so the cost is still there. When governments do not provide health insurance, hospitals must effectively provide it instead.” Hospitals might respond to the burden of uncompensated care in three ways: shifting the cost of care to other payers, cutting the cost of services to all patients and removing unprofitable services, or accepting lower total profit margins. All have the potential to damage quality of care as well as revenue and workflow. But beyond these major systemic responses, there are steps providers can take to reduce their risk of unpaid care and optimize their existing revenue framework. Protect your revenue by finding missing coverage quickly The new reimbursement landscape forces providers to manage more self-pay patients, with high-deductible health plans and health savings accounts. This puts a lot more responsibility and stress on patients themselves, who may not be able to afford their co-payments. Uncovering missed or undisclosed insurance coverage is also costly and time-consuming for providers. Regardless of ability to pay, if your patients are wrongly classified as uninsured or as having only one insurance option, you’re likely to lose revenue. As the financial risk of uncompensated care continues to grow, there are important questions for healthcare executives to consider: How do you decrease your accounts receivable balances and self-pay write-offs? How do you increase cash flow from re-billed claims? Are you missing any opportunities to bill additional payers for services? Are you identifying coverage for emergency department inpatients in time to meet your notice of admission requirements? The answers boil down to having the right processes in place to discover which patients can and cannot afford to pay, ideally before they go through the billing system. When you know this, you can move quickly to direct them to alternative sources of funding. How to find insurance coverage to avoid bad debt and charity write-offs An automated coverage discovery solution could help you identify patient accounts that don’t have sufficient insurance coverage, without the expense and hassle of engaging a collections agency. This proactive software integrates with your revenue cycle to search government and commercial payers automatically, so you can find insurance coverage that may have been missed or forgotten. It relies on multiple data sources and reliable demographic information to detect any inaccurate financial classifications and alternative coverage options. It can also shed light on product usage, productivity and financial results, which may help you fine tune your revenue cycle in other ways. Murry Ford, Director of Revenue at Grady Health System explains how Coverage Discovery allows his team to identify an accurate coverage match for patients without the patient having to share this information: “We use Coverage Discovery when the patient is admitted… the system automatically attaches the coverage to the patient’s account. No one has to get involved – it’s touchless, it’s seamless, and it’s worked really well for us. It’s brought in revenue that we would not have identified otherwise.” Every dollar found in this way is a dollar you’re not writing off to bad debt, or spending on unnecessary patient collections and admin. Mike Simms, Vice President of Revenue Cycle at Cone Health says: “Coverage Discovery is wonderful... After every admission, the next day we get a file which gives us insurance on those that we’ve missed. We can add that insurance to the patient account and bill the insurance company. In the end it helps us resolve accounts in a timely manner. Since we’ve been using Coverage Discovery, we’ve received over $3 million in payments, and that’s more than a 300% ROI.” An automated solution like this can be plugged in immediately to handle unresolved accounts for you, resulting in faster and more accurate collections, greater patient satisfaction, and improved staff workflow – ultimately reducing your organization’s risk of uncompensated care. Learn more about how Coverage Discovery Manager works.

The United States’ health system has become the most expensive in the developed world, and high administrative costs are a big factor. They account for more than 25 percent of spending on hospital care, making American healthcare administrative costs higher than any other country. Much of the problem comes from the complexities of payment. With public health programs, private insurers, and patients themselves all splitting the bill, it’s difficult for hospital administrators to determine who pays what in each situation. Especially during patient registration, they are bogged down by the time-consuming process of verifying patients’ eligibility for insurance and other programs. For these reasons, Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital decided to focus on improving its patient registration process. The private nonprofit safety net hospital in South Los Angeles serves a high-need community and sees about 300 patients per day. Manually checking in all those people meant that MLKCH’s administrative team had an overwhelming workload. The hospital needed an integrated solution. Automation simplifies hospital patient registration The hospital’s staff was spending a significant amount of time checking different payer websites and making phone calls to determine each patient’s eligibility for insurance and various programs. Then, the benefits information had to be copied and pasted into the hospital’s non-integrated platform, which was another slow process that often resulted in inaccuracies. Quality assurance to find and correct those errors was a manual process, too, taking up more of the administrative team’s bandwidth. To free up resources and reduce errors, the hospital wanted to automate its verification processes, streamlining its registration, quality review, and more. MLKCH also needed its hospital patient registration software to work well with the Cerner system it already used. It decided to implement Experian Health’s eCare NEXT® platform. “We decided to use Experian Health’s software within Cerner versus a couple of the products we were looking at, at the same time, because it truly integrated within Cerner,” said Lori Westman, patient access manager at MLKCH. “When we presented this to our CFO, he liked the fact that it was integrated within Cerner; he didn't want us to have to go out to another third-party payer to pull information back. It's all about time and the time we can save on our registrations. That was the biggest selling point — the integration within Cerner and its seamless registrar on the back end. To the team, it's just another program they're working with in Cerner.” The software from Experian Health automates registration and financial clearance, among other patient access processes, which account for up to 80 percent of manual preregistration tasks. The system assesses patients quickly, replacing the information-gathering that staff has traditionally done. For MLKCH, which sees many returning patients, if a patient is already in the system at check-in, eCare NEXT pulls up his or her eligibility automatically when an administrator accesses the account. This saves several minutes, making it a notable patient registration process improvement. The system also eliminates a large portion of redundant tasks. When using the platform to check eligibility with one plan, eCare NEXT also searches for other applicable plans. For example, MLKCH treats a large Medicaid and managed care population, so checking a patient’s eligibility required visits to both the state’s and the health plan’s websites. But eCare NEXT will verify both automatically. Additionally, the fact that eCare NEXT integrated seamlessly with Cerner has improved the hospital’s patient registration process. Because the two platforms work together, patient data has become more accurate and the quality assurance process is less cumbersome. MLKCH was able to implement new QA standards after staff became familiar with the automation tool. The team also found that the enhanced data from eCare NEXT can shape user education and pinpoint areas for further improvements. And while there were some concerns that a new platform would take a long time to adopt, the rollout of the patient registration system was smoother than expected. The administrative team got a robust solution with exceptional support to ensure users have every resource they need. Ultimately, implementing an automation tool eliminated MLKCH’s most time-consuming registration tasks, allowing staff members to focus only on the tasks that needed their attention. This made their jobs easier and more efficient while also reducing training needs and improving compliance. The registration process became much faster. Automating preregistration tasks and eligibility verifications has also ensured MLKCH’s administrators have more accurate eligibility information. This integrates with Cerner to increase the quality of patient records. But the most important benefit of improving the patient registration process has been how it affects patients. These time savings get passed on to them in the form of quicker registration and less hassle proving eligibility. Using eCare NEXT has not only helped the hospital's administrators, but it has also allowed MLKCH to enhance patient service. Westman adds: “We get fewer denials because we're getting true verification data, and our patient volumes continue to increase. So the fact that we can take off two to three minutes, at least, on half of our registrations is speeding up the work for the team, and the turnaround time is much better for the patients.” Need to streamline your patient access department? Learn more or schedule a demo with us today.

This time last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and hospitals across the country weren’t quite ready for the flu season, which turned out to be the deadliest in 40 years. The flu and complications arising from it resulted in the deaths of more than 80,000 people.   Hospitals felt the brunt of the 2017-2018 epidemic early. Hospital and medical center staffs were forced to work overtime, setting up triage tents and treating flu patients in recovery rooms. Alabama declared a state of emergency, and doctors in California had to treat patients in hallways.   Experts predict a milder flu season this year, partly due to an updated flu vaccine that protects against H3N2, which was the severe strain that dominated last year’s flu season. While it's hopeful that this year’s flu season will be better, it's always a busy time for hospitals and providers, so they should be sure they're using the most efficient healthcare IT solutions to streamline their workflow.   Greater efficiency is key   When it comes to efficiency, hospitals should take a cue from Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles, which collaborated with Experian Health to streamline patient registration and insurance verification.   Before the collaboration, MLKCH had to consult websites and make phone calls to confirm a patient's insurance eligibility, which was time-consuming. The hospital has a large Medicaid and managed care population, which means employees had to consult both a state website and a health plan website.   The hospital also had a high-traffic emergency department and limited front-line staff to handle the incoming flow of patients. Additionally, employees performed manual quality assurance, which is a time-consuming task.   Understanding its challenges, Experian Health was able to help the hospital streamline its system to improve efficiency in insurance verification through Coverage Discovery. It also helped the hospital improve patient registration with Registration QA, which has improved data quality and patient registration accuracy.   Since MLKCH integrated Coverage Discovery and Registration QA into Cerner, it has saved precious time when it comes to validating patient and payment information.   “We have a lot of returning patients to our emergency room, so once we check that patient in, their eligibility automatically runs in the background and our staff doesn’t have to go into another website to check their eligibility," said Lori Westman, patient access manager at MLKCH. “This has saved us two to three minutes of our registration time.”   “We average about 300 patients every 24 hours,” she continued. “Heading into flu season, they're expecting to hit a 400-per-day volume, so the fact that we can take off two to three minutes at least on half of our registrations is going to speed up the work for the team that much faster, to have a turnaround time that much better for more patients to come through.”   Managing the season   Only 42 percent of Americans got a flu vaccine last year — painfully shy of the CDC’s 70 percent target. Misconceptions and fears about the vaccination and its effectiveness can keep people from getting it, which only increases the spread of the flu.   Flu season is always going to be a busy time for healthcare providers. But finding ways to manage staff and resources and work more efficiently is going to help hospitals and other facilities better manage the busy season.   Learn more about Experian Health’s Patient Access solutions.