Forty to one: healthcare organization collects on the uncollectable and gains huge ROI using Internet search service. (Internet applications: case history).In today's mobile society, healthcare organizations face a growing challenge to maintain updated patient information. Accurate demographic information is key to improving the revenue cycle for any healthcare organization. Bon Secours Cottage Health Services health services Managed care The benefits covered under a health contract (BSCHS BSCHS Bon Secours Charity Health System (Suffern, New York) ), based in the area around Grosse Pointe Grosse Pointe (grōs point), name referring to five residential suburbs of Detroit, Wayne co., SE Mich. They include the city of Grosse Pointe (1990 pop. 5,681), inc. 1879; Grosse Pointe Farms, city (1990 pop. 10,092), inc. 1893, on Lake St. , Mich., is a joint venture between Bon Secours Health System and Henry Ford Health System that includes 28 facilities, more than 1,800 employees and 750 physicians representing 40 specialty and subspecialty subspecialty, n a limited portion of a narrowly defined professional discipline. E.g., surgery is a specialty of medicine and pediatric vascular surgery is a subspecialty. areas. Facilities and services include two community hospitals, Bon Secours Hospital and Cottage Hospital The original concept of a cottage hospital was a small rural hospital having up to 25 beds. One advantage of such a hospital in villages was the familiarity the local physician might have with their patient that may affect their treatment. ; two 24-hour emergency care locations; a network of primary care outpatient sites, diagnostic centers and pharmacies, as well as home care services and durable medical equipment Durable medical equipment is a term of art used to describe certain Medicare benefits, that is, whether Medicare may pay for the item. The item is defined by Title XVIII the Social Security Act: Recognizing the Challenge Averaging more than 123,000 visits per year, BSCHS experienced a significant problem with the number of statements being sent back as returned mail. In 2001, the patient financial services The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. department received more than 125 pieces of returned mail each month with an average balance of $500. This represented more than $62,500 of unpaid revenue per month, a total of $750,000 per year. BSCHS found it difficult to maintain updated and accurate contact information on patients due to a combination of factors--multiple points of entry for patients, expanding registration areas and a shortage of registration staff. As a result, billing staff often were unable to get statements to patients, even after using bulky reverse telephone directories for address updates and re-mailing statements. This meant the organization couldn't collect on the self-pay portion of many statements, including co-pays not collected at the time of service and expenses not covered not covered Health care adjective Referring to a procedure, test or other health service to which a policy holder or insurance beneficiary is not entitled under the terms of the policy or payment system–eg, Medicare. Cf Covered. by insurance because of terminated coverage or patients' failure to comply with insurance requirements. Over the years, BSCHS had received a number of complaints from patients, too. Patient financial services turned over a past-due account to a collection agency after mailing up to four statements. But some patients, such as those spending the winter in a southern state, may have been sent collection notices without knowing that they owed a payment to the health system. To make matters worse, the collection agency charged about 30 percent of recovered payments as its fee. If it couldn't make contact with a patient after a period of time, it would return the patient's account to patient financial services for final dispensation DISPENSATION. A relaxation of law for the benefit or advantage of an individual. In the United States, no power exists, except in the legislature, to dispense with law, and then it is not so much a dispensation as a change of the law. , including writing off the account as bad debt. BSCHS needed a solution to: * Easily update and validate patient addresses; * Decrease its returned mail rate; and * Increase the amount of out standing revenue collected. Direct Mail to the Rescue In mid-2001, Celia Lapinta, BSCHS manager of patient financial services, learned about SearchAmerica through direct mail. Utilizing constantly updated demographic information from multiple data sources, including all three national credit bureaus, SearchAmerica's online service allowed an authorized user authorized user Radiation physics A person who, having satisfied the applicable training and experience requirements, is granted authority to order radioactive material and accepts responsibility for its safe receipt, storage, use, transfer and disposal to obtain an individual's basic information such as full name, address, phone number, Social Security number and date of birth based on sometimes limited information that the user had. It also ensured sensitivity to the privacy issues surrounding personal health information by complying with the three primary acts related to an individual's identifiable data: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website, Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when , the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, Pub. L. No. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338 (November 12, 1999), is an Act of the United States Congress which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, opening up competition and the Fair Credit Reporting Act The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is legislation embodied in title VI of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (15 U.S.C.A. § 1681 et seq. [1968]), which was enacted by Congress in 1970 to ensure that reporting activities relating to various consumer transactions are conducted in a . Since SearchAmerica charged a setup fee of about $100 and a small, flat fee per search, Lapinta figured there was little to lose by signing up BSCHS for the service. What's more, because of the low overall cost, she did not need to seek approval from anyone at BSCHS, and she considered no alternative solutions. Within the month following Lapinta's decision, her department's staff had received secure passwords and undergone an hour's worth of training, via phone and a demo on the vendor's Web site, by searching for their own basic information. Each staff member did this by pulling down a menu to select the type of search desired, typed in the requested information such as a Social Security number, and clicked on the onscreen on·screen or on-screen adj. & adv. 1. As shown on a movie, television, or display screen. 2. Within public view; in public. "submit" button to retrieve the corresponding address in a matter of seconds. Following the training, billing staff immediately began using the SearchAmerica Web site on a daily basis. When a statement was returned, one of the staff used any of a variety of searches, depending on the information BSCHS already had on a given patient, to locate the patient's most recent address. The address then was entered into BSCHS's mainframe system and used for re-mailing the statement within a week. The collection agency no longer was needed to handle returned mail, since patient financial services took over this function. Realizing Benefits To determine the effectiveness of utilizing this new service, Lapinta conducted a study of patient financial services' preliminary results shortly after implementation. In the study, billing staff tracked 108 returned statements for which they had obtained updated addresses using the service. After mailing the statements to the new addresses, the department collected more than $14,000 from them within the first month. The cost of using SearchAmerica to obtain the updated addresses was only $351, compared to the approximately $4,000 BSCHS would have paid to its collection agency for the same task. "With a return on investment of nearly 40-to-1, we did not feel the need to track the accounts any further," says Lapinta. "We feel this is a very good tool that we're using at a minimal cost." Now, nearly all of the department's re-mailings succeed, due to a combination of using SearchAmerica and the low transient nature of the Grosse Pointe area, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Lapinta. In addition, because a staff member dedicates a portion of her time to accessing the service on a daily or weekly basis to locate updated demographic information, patient financial services gets statements into patients' hands more quickly, which means statements spend fewer days in accounts receivable accounts receivable n. the amounts of money due or owed to a business or professional by customers or clients. Generally, accounts receivable refers to the total amount due and is considered in calculating the value of a business or the business' problems in paying and patients have an opportunity to pay before receiving a collection notice. This has increased customer satisfaction and improved patient relations at BSCHS--and it has certainly improved the organization's revenue recovery. SOURCE Celia Lapinta Manager, Patient Financial Services Bon Secours Cottage Health Services Grosse Pointe area, Mich. PRODUCT/COMPANY SearchAmerica Maple Grove Maple Grove might designate:
www. healthcare.searchamerica.com For more information about SearchAmerica, www.rsleads.com/306ht-201 |
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