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Linking payment to patient satisfaction could have a profound impact on the doctor-patient relationship, argues James N. Kirkpatrick, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.
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Prescribing potentially addictive medications "is often a very challenging situation for physicians," says David A. Fleming, MD, MA, FACP, professor and chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine and director of the Center for Health Ethics at University of Missouri in Columbia.
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It's a "tremendous victory to have something approaching universal access" as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but the resulting increase in underinsured patients will pose ethical challenges for providers, according to Joseph J. Fins, MD, MACP, chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of medical ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Center in New York City.
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For one month, patient access leaders at Witham Health Services in Lebanon, IN, targeted one simple but important change to improve the level of customer service given by registrars.
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Emergency department (ED) collections jumped from $55,000 to $120,000 annually after eligibility software was implemented at Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine, OH, reports John E. Kivimaki, director of patient accounts.
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While many patient access departments can give patients the estimated full cost of a service, to date, very few are able to provide an accurate out-of-pocket estimate, says Becky Peters, regional director of patient access services for Sutter Health West Bay in San Francisco.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that health insurance companies can be a pain for patients. What may be a surprise is that hospitals often complain, too, for the same reasons: denied claims, low reimbursement, late reimbursement, and thickets of red tape.
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Annual revenue collected for Medicaid patients has doubled at Trinity Regional Health System in Rock Island, IL, since January 2010, since the screening process is now done internally instead of by a contracted company.
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You might assume that registrars giving emergency department (ED) patients the impression that they are required to pay money to receive treatment is a thing of the distant past, as this situation is a likely violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) which has been in place since 1986.
