A focus at Skiff Medical Center has been the financial department and where procedures can be streamlined and better applied to save both time and money. In several areas, through many changes, the department is making headway.
“I’m fairly confident that we will certainly do much better than budget,” said Jeanne Goche, interim chief administrative officer.
A step the hospital took in April was to bring back self pay to the hospital, instead of having it outsourced. As a part of that process, patients have to be notified for 120 days of their statement before it can be sent to collections. When brought back in house, that time had to start over.
“Services had that account for six months, we couldn’t prove that they had sent statements or they had pursued, so we literally had to start the clock over. (We) happily report we are pretty current at this point, our 120 days have elapsed,” said Karri Woody, director of financial at Skiff.
Another area of focus is improving the front end, in terms of getting money in. To help with that, secretaries that are in the emergency department will begin doing some bed side registration. To assist in the process a new work station on wheels, or ‘WOW’ as it is nicknamed, is available with a scanner for cards and a cash drawer to be able to take co-pays.
Employees are also being cross-trained to do pre-registrations, which used to be standard, but had gone away in recent years. The patient will get a call about their upcoming appointment as well as any instructions they need and will also be asked about their demographics.
“(We are) doing everything we can to get all of the billing information correct the first time and faster than what we are doing it now, so we can those bills out the door correctly and avoid the revenue cycle noise of incorrect information on the back end,” Goche said. “As we are getting this all in place, we will be putting into place with the central scheduling piece, moving central scheduling function over into a kiosk in the Newton Clinic and hopefully encouraging and being more customer oriented for our patients when they are getting referred to us by the Newton Clinic physicians.”
The cancer clinic will now have a full-time staff member with its own secretary as well as borrowing another secretary when available. The physical medicine and rehabilitation will also have a sign-in area downstairs, so patients do not have to travel upstairs to sign-in.
With a lot of changes and staff members receiving new responsibilities, communication and clear management has been a top priority.
“Keeping the lines of communications open so when there is opportunities that do present themselves we maximize those opportunities,” Woody said.
“I’ve never seen a restructuring go as smoothly as this one appears to be going right now,” Goche said.
Contact Staff Writer Jamee A. Pierson at (641) 792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com.