Patient access coordinator Erica Escobar recently justified the need for two new insurance verification positions at Chicago-based Norwegian American Hospital. She pointed to a recent change: The shift from Medicare and/or Medicaid insurance, to Medicare and/or Medicaid managed care organization (MCO) plans.
“Nearly all of the MCOs require some form of notification of a patient admission,” Escobar says. Currently, 61% of the hospital’s inpatient discharges are Medicare and/or Medicaid MCO plans, which is an 18% increase over the previous year.
The insurance verification positions require a minimum of six weeks of training. “This averages over $3,000 in labor per employee, not including the trainer,” says Escobar.
Most newly hired insurance verifiers have never used the hospital’s information system before and need extensive training on it. “They also need to learn our processes for every area within our department,” says Escobar.
Instead of new hires, Escobar placed two cross-trained individuals in the positions. These employees already had extensive knowledge of all patient access areas. “This saved us over $6,000 in training hours,” says Escobar.
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Erica Escobar, Patient Access Coordinator, Norwegian American Hospital, Chicago. Email: [email protected].
