Hospital Access Management articles from September 2002

Hospital Access Management archives from September 2002

Bedside registration is `gold standard' for care in Iowa emergency department: patients and clinicians love the new system.
September 1, 2002... Bedside registration is "the gold standard" for care in the emergency department (ED), ensuring EMTALA compliance as well as patient privacy and satisfaction, says Mary Miller, RN, manager of access services at Mercy Medical Center (MMC) in...

Tighter system reduces registration to 6-7 minutes; physicians' concerns sparked effort.
September 1, 2002... Registration times for patients at Memorial Medical Center (MMC) in Sioux City, IA, average "six or seven minutes," says Mary Miller, RN, manager of access services. That includes "anybody who comes in for anything," she adds. "We really...

Collaboration key in decentralization effort; nurses, registrars worked closely.
September 1, 2002... When BryanLGH Medical Center in Lincoln, NE, built the Bryan Medical Plaza in 1993 to better serve its outpatients, the emphasis was on customer satisfaction, with a goal of having the patient encounter as few faces as possible during the...

MSP ruling prompts questions, concerns; continued `re-asking' is a problem. (Access Feedback).(Medicare Secondary Payer)
September 1, 2002... Denise Leapaldt, admissions supervisor for Jamestown (ND) Hospital, a 56-bed facility, offers feedback on two topics that were addressed in the July 2002 issue of Hospital Access Management. The first issue, Leapaldt says, concerns Medicare...

Separate discharge area promotes copay collection; use cues to direct patients. (Access Feedback).
September 1, 2002... (Editor's note: This second part of a two-part series offers tips for collecting copays at discharge.) It's not a question of whether you should ask patients for copays, but when, say several ED reimbursement experts. Here are three...

Finding right fit for job is call center challenge; `disciplined approach' required. (Access Feedback).
September 1, 2002... While building technical infrastructure has been the core issue for hospitals and other organizations developing customer call centers, the emerging trend is a focus on the more human part of the process, suggests Katherine Dean, SPHR, a...

Study says ED visits usually nonemergent.(emergency department)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The majority of visits to hospital emergency departments (EDs) in the United States aren't for emergencies, according to a recent study by Solucient, a health care information company with more than a million commercial and Medicare ED claims....

Tools sought to measure quality of hospital care.(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is looking for tools that measure patients' experience with quality of hospital care. In line with its priority--and that of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services--of...

Grants fund patient satisfaction studies.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Press Ganey Associates, a satisfaction measurement and improvement firm based in South Bend, IN, will award five $10,000 grants over the next 12 months for applied research to identify best practices for use throughout the health care field....

Clinical trials harmed by lack of informed consent.
September 1, 2002... The mention of clinical trials often triggers a silence between physician and patient, usually because neither one knows much about the subject. Nearly 80% of physicians admit they would like to know more about clinical trials so they can help...