The patient may recall his or her conversation with his/her physician, but his/her experience may have started much earlier.
This begins with the first call. Request for appointment online. The insurance questions. The required form(s) to be filled out. The prompt that is sent prior to the visit. The therapy itself and even just the act of having to figure out what to bring and if a service is covered can affect a patient’s comfort and preparedness.
These may be insignificant moments in comparison to the actual medical appointment. Together, they can help or hurt a patient’s willingness to be cared for before he or she has even begun.
The Patient Journey actually starts before the Exam Room
A health center will probably pay a great deal of attention to what occurs during the appointment. However, the process of the appointment itself can also be as crucial to the process as anything else.
When the patient is well informed and receives proper communication, he knows what to expect. Your patient may end up feeling stressed when having to call your office over and over again and return the same information or attempting to answer insurance questions at the last minute.
Administrative communication issues like making appointments, acquiring information, clearing insurance and billing problems have been shown to be significant problems for patients and can lead to missed or delayed care.
This will make administration easier than it would otherwise be. It can be incorporated into a patient-centered approach.
Small Frictions Can Create Big Frustrations
Suppose we say that you call in for an appointment and find that your insurance details haven’t been checked.
You might have some questions:
- Have I got any coverage?
- Does my network include the provider?
- Do I have to pay a copayment?
- Are there any expenses included in the service?
- Do I need additional authorization?
If these answers are not provided until the appointment day, it can lead to uncertainty to frustration.
Practices can proactively check eligibility and benefits verification to help identify insurance-related concerns earlier. More vitally, it provides staff with a chance to convey pertinent information prior to the patient’s arrival.
This leaves everyone involved with the property with a more predictable experience.
Clear Communication Builds Confidence
The burden of the administrative burden should not be placed on the patient in order to receive care.
When communication is simple, timely, a great difference can be made. Reminders of appointments should include helpful information. The instructions for the registration should be simple to understand. Patients should be informed about when he or she needs to fill out other forms or provide more documentation.
This is also true when it comes to financial communication.
Patients might find a greater sense of comfort when they know what amount of their healthcare expenses is covered by their insurance program, and what will be their own responsibility. The exact costs are sometimes not possible to predict at the outset, but it’s important to give people information at the start to minimize upsets.
Any degree of improvement, no matter how small, in communication can create a sense of better organization and responsiveness within an organization.
Better Processes Can Also Help Staff
Improving the experience for your patient doesn’t necessarily mean adding extra work for an already overworked front office staff.
It’s possible, in fact, that the reverse is the case.
When administrative processes are organized, staff don’t waste time on fixing preventable mistakes, looking for missing details, answering the same kind of questions, or fixing issues if they could have been dealt with at an earlier stage.
For instance, a set procedure in the front end can be created to check patient information and insurance details prior to the appointment. A uniform process can also streamline the process of tracking the missing information from the patient before it is used for billing or patient communication.
This sets the stage for a crucial link between efficiency and the patient experience.
Where Revenue Cycle Management Fits In
Many of the processes of revenue cycle management take place firsthand around the patient journey, making it look like a purely financial function.
The information required for eligibility verification takes place prior to care. Registration is prior to the care. Communication about finances may occur prior to or during care. Billing and payment concerns will come later.
Combination of these processes can result in patients having fewer administrative interruptions.
If a medical practice requires further assistance, then they can outsource to specialized medical billing services to handle the medical practice’s claims submission, payment posting, denial follow-up, and accounts receivable. This can enable in-house teams to focus more on patient care, while keeping the financial process more streamlined.
The objective isn’t just to get collected payments more efficiently. The aim is to establish an administrative system which will facilitate the whole care journey.
Technology Should Make Healthcare Easier
It’s technology, which has provided more opportunities for practices to streamline the experience for patients.
This will save unnecessary phone calls by using online scheduling. Registration may be even easier with a digital form. Patients can get reminders via automated means. With the help of electronic insurance verification, staff can help identify potential coverage issues earlier.
Technologies are not the only solution, however.
An improperly designed digital process can be just as frustrating as a non-digital process. Patients don’t necessarily want more technology, they just want fewer obstacles in the way.
Best systems are ones which make things seem easy to do which are common to the job, but at the same time can retain the human touch that is necessary when things get complicated.
A Better Experience Is Built Step by Step
It’s not always an overhaul that’s needed to make an administrative trip more patient-oriented.
Practices can begin by reviewing the behaviors patients engage in prior to an appointment and pose the following questions:
- Where are confusion problems present for patients?
- In which instances are staff having to reshape data?
- What are some questions that can be resolved first?
- What processes are causing unnecessary delays/phone calls?
- Does insurance and financial information need to be communicated in a better manner?
These questions can be the means of enhancing efficiency and patient satisfaction.
Administrative procedures and patient satisfaction have also been studied, and significant links found between administrative quality, patient satisfaction and patient trust.
From Administrative Process to Patient Experience
Word-of-mouth is the best indicator of a healthcare practice’s reputation. The reputation of a healthcare practice is best known from word of mouth, regardless of the quality of the clinical care provided.
It’s the same with the opposite. In setting up, communicating, verifying insurance, registering and billing, the patient’s total time in and out of the system is reduced and more time is spent on healthcare.
That’s why patient experience should not be thought of as starting with when a provider steps onto the premises.
It starts from the first contact.
The opportunity is to think outside the box of the appointment itself in practices, and try to enhance the journey through which they get there. An efficient administrative system will minimize friction, ease the burden on staff, streamline the financial aspects and ensure patients are well informed and prepared.
The patient experience begins before the appointment—and each patient interaction with a healthcare professional is an opportunity to make it a little easier.