Recap: Pre-Visit Access Experience Webinar

By Nkechi Okwu-Lawrence, MPH

Enriching the patient access experience in ambulatory settings is crucial from the moment a patient enters the facility, but what about the patient access experience prior to arrival? Justin Ko, MD, Alpa Vyas, and Rebecca Carey of Stanford Medicine Healthcare share their efforts in mitigating fragmentation in referral & pre-visit experiences for patients by transforming the referral structure, referral processing & scheduling, and pre-encounter experience. All three of these leaders sit in the Pre-Visit Experience Governance & Work teams, aiming to “improve likelihood to recommend an easy, timely access to appropriate care”. A novel aspect of their efforts is the 50/50 Prep process within the Pre-Encounter Experience used to inform and prepare for a patient’s upcoming visit. Phillip N Quick, VP of Access Operations at Rush University System for Health, highlights “schegistration” challenges in their Access Center, where pre-registration and scheduling processes are completed simultaneously. Some solutions to this challenge that have been implemented include:

• A re-design of the scheduling and registration process
• Process for Access Center agents to offer payment plan solutions with patients
• Epic, Revenue Cycle, and Access training alignment
• Creation of new Epic Agent Dashboard
• Adjusted Call Center Metrics & Staffing
• Reduced Handoff to Revenue Cycle by 80%
• Training and competency to collect REaL (Race, Ethnicity, and Language) data

Patrick Healy, Director of Enterprise Registration and Scheduling at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, details their schegistration process as well. Approximately 6,000 patients actively utilize the platform to date. Healy notes Medicare billing and denials for Medicare Advantage plan members as the “biggest registration issue for years and years”, and the recently implemented Query Chaining system drastically optimizes registration. Penn Medicine newly requires capture and validation of insurance at scheduling to ensure eligible insurance ahead of appointments, regardless of proximity to scheduled date.

For PAC members, go to Webinars (memberclicks.net) to listen to our panel of experts, who presented at the September 15, 2022 webinar titled: The Pre-Visit Access Experience.