Access Management Quarterly
Business center to meld outpatient functions
Clinics affected serve 400,000 per year
Planning is under way for a new ambulatory business center that will consolidate a wide range of outpatient functions at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock.
The goal of the new center is to consolidate business functions so that new outpatients will have a single point of contact for scheduling and registration, according to Philip Baroni, associate director for outpatient services.
Imperatives in the plan include:
- Reducing patient frustration with telephone tag and difficulty contacting someone when attempting to schedule appointments at UAMS.
- Reducing the number of calls to outpatient clinics — which serve 400,000 patients a year — that cover an entire range of specialties and are located in multiple sites.
Centralizing the business function in the outpatient environment is a concept that has been under consideration for most of the past 10 years, Baroni notes, but for various reasons has not come to fruition.
UAMS now has 130 front-end staff handling registration and appointments at 30-plus outpatient clinics in a half-dozen buildings, he says. Those functions are accomplished in several different ways.
A unit operating under the supervision of Holly Hiryak, director of hospital admissions, currently does preregistration and some insurance verification for 10 of the outpatient clinics and an appointment center serves some of those clinics plus some additional ones.
"Our goal is really to expand those services to cover the gamut [of outpatient clinics]," Baroni says. "The preregistration and appointment groups are really a microcosm of what we want to do with the ambulatory business center."
Streamlining scheduling
Achieving that single point of contact for outpatients will require a cultural change, Baroni says. "The appointment-making process here is done in a variety of ways — the appointment center, the individual physician's office, the clinic — and one of the imperatives is to streamline that.
"Our purpose," he adds, "is to provide excellent customer service by addressing the needs of ambulatory patients in a warm, friendly way."
The initial effort will be with patients who are new to the system, with return appointments continuing to be made in the clinics, Baroni says. "Our goal is to preregister 95% of new patients and to complete any consult or referral obligations prior to the clinic visit as well."
One of the goals is to standardize business processes across the ambulatory clinical enterprise, he notes, and ensure that requirements are consistent in all the clinics.
One of the first steps will be to merge the outpatient preregistration unit and the appointment center.
"We are hoping to do this on an FTE-neutral basis," Baroni adds. "We've done some analysis on that."
The intent is to have new patients being served by the ambulatory business center within a year, Baroni says.
Crucial to the process, he notes, is an advisory group of senior physicians that will meet monthly to discuss the project. An operational group made up of "those in the trenches" will meet twice a month.
"We've been presenting the proposal to various physician groups," Baroni says, "and we've had a positive response, but some doubts have been expressed as well."
Once the new ambulatory business center is in place, he explains, the process would work as follows: Someone who needs, for example, an orthopedic appointment — instead of grabbing the phone book and trying to find the right UAMS number — can call the ambulatory business center number for assistance in making an appointment.
Staff will have been trained to make an appointment with a specialist if the patient requires a referral, he says. "If this is a new patient, the employee will do the registration."
Other methods of registration — the Internet or an automated voice response system — that are already being used by the preregistration unit also will be available.
In addition to gathering demographic and insurance information, staff will advise patients of any copays that may be due, he notes. "Ideally, there will be very minimal check-in at the clinic, which will free up clinic staff to focus on the customer service needs of our patients."
(Editor's note: Philip Baroni can be reached at [email protected].)
Planning is under way for a new ambulatory business center that will consolidate a wide range of outpatient functions at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content