Checklists track cases, documents, interviews
Simple forms can help you stay organized
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. Like most risk managers, Rosemary Gulizia, RN, JD, found herself swamped with simultaneous cases and projects, so much so that she had trouble keeping track of what was going on with any one concern. So the director of risk management at Riverside (CA) Community Hospital developed a system of checklists that help her ensure nothing is overlooked and provide an easy way to keep track of what tasks have been done and what tasks await completion. She uses four different checklists to cover some of the more common concerns of a risk manager.
"When something happens in the hospital, there are so many things to think about," she explains. "When you have a couple of cases going on at the same time, it’s hard to keep track of whether you did something in that case or in this case. Now I have a checklist and just go down the list to make sure."
Gulizia uses these four checklists:
• potentially compensable event (PCE) checklist;
• request for interview;
• medical records requests;
• billing department requests.
She keeps a file of blank checklists in her office and takes one out whenever needed. (See samples of the checklists, pp. 89-90.) The PCE checklist is especially useful because it covers most of the concerns with cases that may result in a lawsuit or compensation. The original PCE checklist is placed at the front of the case file in Gulizia’s office, so that it also serves as a handy summary of what has been done to date.
"If someone calls and asks a question four months down the road, or if I get a notice of intent in the mail, I call pull the checklist from the file and see what I’ve already done," Gulizia explains. "I don’t have to sit and try to remember everything. And I don’t have to sift through a stack of papers to piece the story together."
The form concerning a request for interview can be a big timesaver for Gulizia. She uses it whenever the insurance company or an attorney calls her and asks for an interview with a staff member involved in a PCE. Rather than tracking down the individual herself, which can be difficult with all the odd work shifts in a hospital, Gulizia just fills out the form and sends it to the director of that unit.
The request for interview form notes that a certain employee needs to call the named person to discuss the event. Gulizia has educated unit directors to the correct usage of the forms so they understand that the form represents Gulizia’s formal request for that employee to place the call. It also grants permission to the employee to speak to that individual about the PCE.
The original form is sent to the unit director, and a copy is placed in the risk manager’s file as a record that the request was made. It is up to the unit director to see that the employee places the phone call. The written request usually gets better results than passing on the request verbally, Gulizia says, "because you really can’t ignore paper."
The other two checklists concern records that the risk manager commonly requests, plus issues that may need her approval. With the medical records request form, Gulizia can just circle the items that she wants for a case. The form includes all the information that the medical records department needs to comply with the request, so the request form can greatly reduce the number of phone calls needed to obtain the records.
The checklist for the billing department works in a similar way. The form lets the billing department know what records the risk manager needs, and it allows her to authorize how the billing department should proceed with the case.
"It’s such a big time-waster to call back and forth, leaving messages, and [deal with] people calling back to ask exactly what it was you wanted," Gulizia notes.
"People really like this system because they don’t have to remember what I said in a phone call, and there’s no doubt about what is needed."
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