Author Archive for Dom Nicastro
Dom Nicastro is a senior managing editor for HCPro, Inc.’s revenue cycle division. He manages the Patient Access Resource Center and develops training, management, and compliance products for the company’s editorial team in the areas of: • Revenue cycle • HIPAA • Corporate Compliance • Materials Management • Patient Access • Patient Financial Services. Dom is the former editor of the Gloucester Daily Times, where he led the paper to the New England News Association Newspaper of the Year in 2005 and a runner-up for the same award by the New England Press Association in 2007.
2008 patient access success
Editor’s note: The following is part of an ongoing Patient Access Weekly Advisor series on successful patient access departments.
Tanja Twist, director, patient financial services, Methodist Hospital, Arcadia, CA:
2008 has been a very busy year for my admitting department, and it isn’t over yet. A few of our major accomplishments are as follows:
Express unit. We started off the year by fine-tuning our pre-admission process and opened up an “express registration unit,” which guarantees that our pre-registered guests are processed in less than five minutes. This has been an extreme satisfier not only for our patients but also for our physicians and ancillary receiving departments.
New-hire program. Almost simultaneously with this, we began a very aggressive new-hire training program and staff re-education course, hiring a staff education coordinator to facilitate all training for staff. We put leads in place to facilitate registration audits and have found a significant decrease in registration errors and an increase in upfront collections since implementing these initiatives.
About Patient Access Advisor
Patient Access Advisor, the 12-page newsletter formerly published by HCPro, Inc., published its final edition in December 2008.
We covered the gamut of patient access, from changes to the Advanced Beneficiary Notice forms to discovering best methods to keep your staff members happy.
We are pleased to help you apply the newsletter’s forms, tips, tools, and best practice methods at your facility, so enjoy!
– Dom Nicastro
Senior managing editor
Patient Access Resource Center
Training Tool: Medical necessity
Editor’s note: This training tool is provided by Khristine Anderson, training and data integrity specialist at Baptist Health South Florida, which includes seven hospitals in the Miami area. Baptist uses the following script for Medicare compliance and documenting medical necessity, which Medicare defines as services or items reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury. A provider who bills Medicare for services that Medicare deems not medically necessary can be prosecuted for fraud. This script is only a guide; departmental protocols should be followed for all circumstances not covered.
Medicare Secondary Payer tool
Ask more questions.
That is one suggestion to avoid denials when a Medicare Secondary Payer is involved in a claim at your healthcare facility, says Kevin Willis, director of Medicare Operations at Claim Services, Inc., in Naperville, IL.
Willis says that, most of the time, registrars in patient access are more concerned with the speed of their registrations and whether or not the customer is satisfied.
“Accuracy falls third at best,” Willis says.
The following is a form you can use to ensure accuracy in your MSP process. It is provided by Willis’ company and is also featured in the HCPro, Inc.’s CD-ROM, Medicare Secondary Payer Questionnaire Training Toolkit.
Patient Access Advisor, December 2008
Take a look at the December 2008 issue of the Patient Access Advisor newsletter, which features articles on:
- Advanced Beneficiary Notice Forms
- Front-end success
- Medicare Secondary Payer
- Medical Necessity
- Benchmarking on registration accuracy
NEWS: Unapproved drugs still sold
Medicaid still covers drugs not reviewed by the government – about $200 million worth since 2004, the Associated Press reports.
The medications – linked to dozens of deaths – are decades old. The Food and Drug Administration had less restrictive measures then and has tried, to no avail, to eliminate them from the market.
Get the full story in the Associated Press.
PATIENT ACCESS GOALS: Coping with a major remodel
Beth Hunley, registration manager at Jay County Hospital in Portland, IN, shared with us her facility’s goals as it undergoes a major overhaul of its hospital:
We are currently doing a major remodel of our hospital focusing on our ancillary services, including the patient registration department.
The goals for our new area are as follows:
- Move forward with a professional dress code that will complement our new area
- Develop a new customer service plan that focuses on:
- Patients first
- Compassion
- Walking a mile in the patient’s shoes
- Giving all your attention to the patient sitting in front of you. Patients will be escorted to the registration booths instead of being told to have a seat. Patients now have a choice of where they receive their medical care, and we want to be that choice at Jay County Hospital.
- Implement an electronic medical records system
- Implement “GUI” registration instead of character-based registration
- Implement a switchboard operator
- Hold training sessions for all employees, focusing on any weaknesses in a positive manner
- Complete the CHAM exam (for myself) and CHAA (for the registration employees)
CMS UPDATE: CMS rescinds and replaces previous transmittal on Medicare deductible, coinsurance, and premium rates for 2009
On November 17, CMS rescinded and replaced its November 7 transmittal updating the Medicare deductible, coinsurance, and premium rates for 2009. The new transmittal adds information inadvertently left out in section 20.6 of the manual.
The 2009 income parameters for determining the Part B premium were not complete. All other information remains the same.
Effective date: January 1, 2009 Implementation date: January 5, 2009.
About these benchmarking reports
Patient Access Advisor, the 12-page newsletter formerly published by HCPro, Inc., published its final edition in December 2008.
We produced benchmarking reports in PAA for patient access managers on salaries, registration accuracy rates, self-pay patients and hiring and personnel matters. Each report is a product of your concerns needs and wishes in order to make your front end and revenue cycle department better. For each report, we surveyed hundreds of revenue cycle managers.
We are pleased to help you apply these benchmark findings at your facility!
– Dom Nicastro
Senior managing editor
Patient Access Resource Center
2008 BENCHMARK REPORT: Registration accuracy rates
Want to know how your peers do with their registration accuracy rates? Want to know if their numbers are better than they were 18 months ago? We at the Patient Access Resource Center (PARC) do, too.
That is why we prepared this eight-page benchmarking report. Your revenue cycle department is only as good as your patient access team. And it all begins with accuracy on the front end.
To read the report, please click here.