Better relationship with docs part of initiative
As part of a comprehensive customer service effort, which also includes consolidating the admitting and patient accounting departments and cross-training staff, Valley View Hospital in Glenwood, CO, is fostering a closer working relationship with the physicians’ offices it serves.
"My idea is to make the whole system work better for the patient," says Kathy Trauger, patient financial services operational leader. "If we’re going to do that, we have to drop the adversarial roles with the physicians’ offices and take a look at the big picture."
Information is the lifeblood of that effort, she explains. Ideally, the hospital should develop a partnering relationship with physicians’ offices, she says, in order to obtain complete demographic and insurance information at the beginning of the registration process regardless of whether the patient visits the hospital or the physician first.
But what’s in it for me?
"There are a lot of territorial issues, and also the issue of [physician office staff saying], I don’t need this [information], don’t use it, so I’m not going to get it’," she notes. "We’ve run into a few [physicians’ offices] that don’t bill insurance so they don’t attempt to get any insurance information just name, address, phone number, and employer."
By the same token, Trauger says, she’s had trouble impressing upon her registration staff the importance of obtaining information on the reason for a visit and the diagnosis information the medical records department needs for the next step in the process. "They ask me why we need this, and I say that if we don’t ask, the patient gets asked at every stop from then on," she says.
The idea is to consolidate the information and obtain it wherever the patient comes in first, she explains. In many cases, the patient sees the physician once every two years but may come to the emergency department sometime in between. At that point, Trauger adds, "We’re able to update [the patient record] and keep it current."
Conversely, a physician’s office will do the same if the patient goes there but not to the hospital.
Valley View is working toward establishing a data repository that will link the hospital and physicians’ offices. It is expected to be in place in the next year. Until then, they are sharing information primarily via telephone and fax, she says.
How can we help each other?
Meanwhile, Trauger and her staff are concentrating on improving communication with physicians’ office staffs, she says, by posing the question, "What do you need from me and what do I need from you?" She and another member of her staff regularly attend the meetings of the local physician office managers association.
"Where I’d like to go with this is to standardize the information request with some kind of standardized"questionnaire, Trauger says. "I don’t want to call it a form, because we’re getting away from hard copy. We’ll get a core group of people from the hospital, and feedback from as many physicians’ offices as possible, to develop this."
Acceptance from the physicians will be crucial, she notes, because it will involve their staffs asking, on occasion, for information they wouldn’t need otherwise. Trauger says she also will solicit input on the standardized questionnaire from physicians who don’t see patients [in their offices], such as anesthesiologists, to determine if there are components that would make their work easier.
Valley View’s computer system makes possible easy additions to the face sheet, so Trauger has been able to grant physicians’ requests to include specific data on the document, such as the addresses of insurance companies and information about any secondary or tertiary insurance.
[For more information, contact: Kathy Trauger, patient financial services operational leader, Valley View Hospital, P.O. Box 1970, Glenwood Springs, CO 81602; Telephone: (970) 945-6535. E-mail: [email protected].]
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