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Articles

  • ‘Virtual gathering place’ is hospital patient pleaser

    Several hundred hospitals throughout the country are now giving patients and their families the opportunity to set up “CarePages” that allow them to send updates on the patient’s condition over the Internet and receive messages in return.
  • Access takes on the task of rerouting patient mail

    Solutions such as the CarePages designed by Chicago-based TLContact are modern-day ways of expressing concern about people who are ill or undergoing surgery. But while people don’t send cards to patients as much as they used to, notes the senior director of access services at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, there is still a sizable flow of personal mail arriving at hospitals that must be dealt with.
  • Access Q&A - Reader seeks listserv: Is there a forum for access?

    Are there any listservs for admitting/access departments?— Paula Caster, admitting/communications supervisor at Ridgecrest (CA) Regional Hospital
  • Grievance process is clarified as CoPs revised

    The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued revisions to its interpretive guidelines for the hospital conditions of participation (CoP) in Medicare, including clarifications on how patient grievances should be handled and when a billing complaint is considered a grievance.
  • News Briefs

    Beginning Oct. 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will no longer process electronic Medicare claims for payment unless they comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
  • Full September 2005 Issue in PDF

  • Patients give hospital heads-up: It’s time for on-line registration

    It became very clear that customers of Dayton, OH-based Kettering Medical Center Network were ready for on-line registration soon after the hospital network began testing the process in August 2004, says the director of patient registration and central scheduling.
  • Publicity and planning drives on-line reg success

    Marketing and advance planning were the keys to success when Memphis, TN-based Baptist Memorial Health Care began offering its patients on-line registration, says the corporate director of access operations.
  • Shelter with follow-up care helps homeless

    An innovative homeless shelter — where people who need post-discharge medical care are allowed to stay 24-hours a day — is freeing up hospital beds for more acute patients and providing ongoing benefits to individuals who typically access the health care system only through the emergency department.
  • Collaborative spirit marks success of eOrder pilot

    Cooperation and collaboration have been the keys to success in the trial run of a new process for screening orders for medical necessity at the point of care — in the physician’s office — and electronically sending them to the hospital, says the manager of the same-day surgery and presurgical testing departments at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, IL.