At Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH, patient access employees are assigned a number so they can see anonymously how they perform against monthly productivity reports.
“These show the number of calls taken, the error rate, and customer service quality score,” Ila Kartavich, director of patient access and central scheduling, reports.
In central scheduling, the time from when the phone rings until it’s answered is a key metric. “We want it to be 25 seconds. For our abandonment rate, we strive to hit 4%,” Kartavich says.
If a provider believes an error was made in pre-registration or scheduling, it’s reported electronically to patient access trainers.
“We look at the audit trails in Epic to see if it was truly an error. If so, we do additional training,” Kartavich says. “We have a 1% error rate. We take that very seriously.”
Often, it turns out there was no error. A parent might report hearing the incorrect appointment time or location, but a review of the call shows the scheduler gave the correct time. “Sometimes, we find it’s a system error,” Kartavich notes.
If a complaint involves rudeness on the part of a staff member, and the supervisor feels this is a valid concern after listening to the call, the call is played back for the employee.
“We discuss how we would have handled it differently,” Kartavich says, noting trainers pull five random calls for every scheduler each month. “We listen for all benchmarks, and they are graded on that.”
SOURCE
- Ila Kartavich, Director, Patient Access/Central Scheduling, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH. Phone: (614) 355-2286. Email: [email protected].
Leaders credit audit trails and productivity reports.
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