Centegra’s pre-reg team also doing collections
Efforts reduce registrars’ workload
When Deb Fanning was hired to be patient access manager at Centegra Health System in McHenry, IL, one of her objectives was to establish centralized pre-registration.
That process began in August 2001, Fanning says, when she took four registrars from each of Centegra’s two campuses — Memorial Medical Center (MMC) and Northern Illinois Medical Center — and formed an off-site department at Memorial South, a behavioral health hospital that is an adjunct to MMC.
The pre-registration team is charged with verifying benefits, obtaining pre-certification and making collection attempts on outpatient accounts, she notes. They have had some measure of success with the latter, Fanning points out, collecting $62,000 during their most successful month so far.
Accounts that fall under the team’s purview, she says, include any outpatient surgery, procedure, or treatment. "We’re doing CT, MRI, ultrasounds, anything cardiac-related, and are even going into behavioral health, social services, and dietary services."
The day before a procedure is to take place, Fanning explains, the account is pre-registered and on the schedule. "Patients go directly to the departments. [Ancillary department personnel] cooperate by getting copies of insurance cards and consent signatures."
Because central scheduling is not yet in place at Centegra, the process works as follows, Fanning says. A person calls the appropriate department, where he or she is scheduled for an appointment and then, ideally, transferred to a pre-registration employee. If the person doesn’t have time to give the information, the pre-registration call is made later.
More to come
When construction projects that have complicated operations at both hospitals are completed, she adds, there are plans to add another aspect to the pre-registration process.
"We’re going to send out letters to physicians, announcing that we will pre-register anyone who wishes to call [ahead]," Fanning says. Her department will provide physician offices with cards telling patients how to contact pre-registration staff. "If the physician says to the patient, I want you to run over to the hospital to get a CBC [complete blood count],’ [the patient] can call and let us know before he or she comes to the hospital."
The idea is to eliminate wait time, she says, noting that the effort already has cut the workload for registrars. "They used to do 500-600 [registrations] a month, and now it’s down to 250." As the trend continues, staff will be shifted as needed, Fanning adds, with some moving to pre-registration and some to QA.
Those who work in QA, she notes, must apply for the position and will be chosen from the registrars whose accuracy rate is 100%.
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