Incentives may be unfair for ED copay collection
Rewarding your overall patient access team for ED collections is a more practical approach than rewarding individual staff members, according to Cindy Geaslin, director of patient registration at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, IL.
To promote teamwork, Geaslin uses team celebrations such as pizza parties when they've had a good month.
Geaslin says that for ED registrars, an individual incentive program for copay collection "is just not fair." This is because the largest volume of patients are seen between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m., she says, which means night shift staff don't have nearly the same opportunity to collect as their colleagues. "We started to look at individual incentives, and got a lot of feedback pretty quickly from the night shift," says Geaslin. "They told us that it wasn't fair to them."
After careful consideration, Geaslin decided against offering individual incentives for ED copay collection, although the hospital's internal service award program may be used for staff members who reach new organizational monthly high collection levels.
"We are constantly looking for better ways to do this, but at this point, we don't incentivize individuals," she says. "We expect them to take the copays and, even more so, to identify the copays. It really is part of their job description."
Rewarding your overall patient access team for ED collections is a more practical approach than rewarding individual staff members, according to Cindy Geaslin, director of patient registration at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, IL.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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