Medicaid lessons for private facilities
Customer service is every provider’s fundamental survival skill no matter who pays your patients’ bills, cautions Elaine Bronner, MSN, RN, C, ANP, former director of ambulatory women’s health services at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-University Hospital in Newark.
Bronner advises using the old mystery shopper technique to gauge your facility’s accessibility. Call at a busy time of day with a common query such as, "How often should I have a Pap smear?" See how easy it is to get an answer.
Offer additional customer service accommodations for working women: Full or extra staffing between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to handle lunch hour calls and appointments. See patients at 7 in the morning and 5:30 to 7:30 in the evenings some days, Bronner suggests, "so a woman doesn’t have to take a day off to have a Pap smear."
If you serve Medicaid patients, tap your local health department for extra patient support similar to Prenatal Plus offered by the Englewood, CO-based Tri-County Health Department under the leadership of Maggie Gier, RNC, MS, associate director of nursing. You might be surprised to find other valuable programs such as Tri-County’s family planning services, which is described in the related story, "Medicaid managed care: Lessons to take home," on p. 156.
At the very least, you’re likely to find a wealth of patient education information. And, it’s usually available at cost or free for the asking.
Extra resources like those available through the health departments can improve prenatal outcomes for high-risk women, as you’ll note in the related story, "Medicaid prenatal care nets good birth outcomes," above.
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