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Patient leakage is pretty much what it sounds like—losing patients. Specifically, it’s when they move from in-network primary care physicians to out-of-network specialists or services, and it can significantly impact a hospital’s bottom line.
Streamlining scheduling processes is key to preventing leakage. Here, we’ll unpack the five most effective strategies and explore how MEDHOST is helping our partners keep exceptional patient outcomes in-house.
Establish a seamless coordination system that links primary care providers with in-network specialists and services. This facilitates easier referrals and appointments, ensuring patients receive comprehensive care within the same network.
MEDHOST offers solutions like YourCare Continuum® to help manage referrals effectively.
Implement a user-friendly and efficient scheduling system. This may involve online booking platforms that allow patients to view available slots and book appointments with specialists within the network, reducing the likelihood of them seeking care elsewhere.
MEDHOST Patient Access Solutions provide the tools needed to streamline this process, enhancing patient retention.
One patient, one record—that’s the idea. Utilize integrated communication tools to ensure all parties involved in patient care, including primary care providers, specialists, and patients, are kept informed about appointments, test results, and treatment plans.
MEDHOST Secure Communications offers a single platform for effective and universal information sharing, ensuring patients and providers are always connected.
Educate patients about the benefits of receiving care within the network, such as coordinated treatment plans, shared medical records, and potentially lower costs.
Awareness campaigns can emphasize the convenience and quality of care available within the network. MEDHOST's range of Patient Engagement solutions can help effectively disseminate this information and involve patients more deeply in their care.
Continuously monitor the effectiveness of the scheduling system and seek feedback from both patients and healthcare providers. Use this feedback to make necessary adjustments to further reduce patient leakage.
MEDHOST's Healthcare Analytics Solutions can play a pivotal role in analyzing trends, patient feedback, and system performance to continually improve the scheduling process.
By focusing on these strategies, healthcare facilities can create a more cohesive and efficient healthcare experience for their patients, ensuring they receive the best possible care within their own network.
If you're interested in learning more, email us at inquiries@medhost.com or call 1.800.383.6278.
Creating and implementing relevant clinical documentation standards is one of the most critical steps in adopting or optimizing a hospital’s electronic health records system (EHR). An essential part of any new clinical implementation—not overshadowed by the solution itself—documentation and content play integral roles in a hospital’s clinical and operational efficiency.
This article discusses a few things a hospital should consider when setting up clinical content and what they should expect from a knowledgeable healthcare IT implementation team.
Clinical content is a foundational element of an EHR. Notes, treatment plans, patient diagnosis care standards, test results, medication administration—all these and more are guided by uniform documentation. Thus, this entire content library must be given the utmost attention.
From a clinical perspective, nurses and physicians can perform with more efficiency and accuracy when they have a reliable solution for the entry, storage, and retrieval of evidence-based clinical content.
Operationally, setting clear and relevant clinical documentation standards is critical because of its close ties to improving the value of care. A better value often means reduced costs and maximized reimbursements.
Setting up clinical content requires collaboration from the facility and the EHR vendor. By ensuring this process includes critical decision-makers from both parties, vendor and facility can make sure documentation meets each specific need—clinically, operationally, and from a regulatory perspective.
An EHR vendor will support this process with implementation experts who have hands-on clinical experience in a best-case scenario. Putting this expertise at a hospital’s disposal enables a streamlined and informed approach to setting up clinical content.
For example, vendor and hospital users can create standardized naming conventions that don’t stray too far from previous models and make sense for specified workflows. Something as simple as uniform filenames can ease use and support a clinical team.
Also, an EHR vendor must have the expertise on hand to catch potential documentation issues that may not meet local, state, and government guidelines. It can be time-consuming for hospital staff to keep up with regulatory changes. Knowing industry standards and documentation policies is often a significant part of an implementation expert’s job. This degree of foresight will help prepare a facility to meet government guidelines such as Promoting Interoperability.
Even with the help of a skilled vendor, setting up clinical content is an intricate process. Facilities can reduce the stress clinical documentation can create by focusing on three key aspects—timeline, operations, and content governance.
Successful hospitals will work with their EHR vendor to lay out a realistic approach for setting up clinical content before a go-live event. We find the best practice is to identify and agree on any “must-have” documents or templates and use them for the first 120 days after going live.
The development of clinical content as it relates to operations entails various aspects. Every piece of documentation to be considered must address these points to avoid any operational issues in the future. They include:
Once an EHR is “live,” it is not unlikely for clinical teams to request changes to the content. At MEDHOST, we insist hospitals create clinical governance committees tasked with evaluating and prioritizing requests as they relate to your overall vision. A governance committee can also make sure any newly created documentation and roles standards follow the specified guidelines laid out before implementation.
In addition, a clinical governance committee defines the ongoing processes for clinically related content regarding—patient safety, continued education, onboarding of new staff, reviews, and maintenance. A facility can also encourage CMS guidelines like Promoting Interoperability and Appropriate Use Criteria through the governance committee.
MEDHOST takes specific care to introduce governance concepts and promote engagement within the organization.
All of the best practices and components outlined come into play during every implementation of any MEDHOST solution, whether migrating to a cloud-based EHR or adding a new revenue cycle solution. Our team of implementation experts claims decades of combined clinical experience to help hospitals find a clear pathway to standardized documentation that supports continued clinical and operational success.
To learn about how the MEDHOST implementations team can set you up for success now and into the future, reach out to us at inquiries@medhost.com or call 1.800.383.6278.
YourCare Continuum® enhances quality of care and clinician experience in community hospitals and clinics while promoting improved financial performance. MEDHOST customers utilizing YourCare Continuum can increase revenues by retaining outpatient revenues going to third parties and by decreasing missed appointments.
Our solution allows customers to maintain their investment in ambulatory and other systems while giving physicians a consolidated view of the patient. YourCare Continuum supports efficient management of transitions of care by facilitating the ability to order and schedule across platforms and instances of care. This role-based system may be integrated with any Health Information System (HIS) (ambulatory or inpatient) and allows for greater staff efficiency and an opportunity to increase revenue from reduced no-shows, denials, and underpayments.
Patient satisfaction drops when a patient receives an unexpected bill from their provider for a surprise charge for missing an appointment.
While it is reasonable for providers to charge this fee, both the patient and the provider feel the burden of no-show appointments. The provider loses revenue because of no-shows and experiences operational burdens, while the patient also risks further health issues and bears the financial loss.
When healthcare providers were asked, “What is your biggest challenge with appointments?” in an Oct. 2017 MGMA Stat poll, 44 percent noted no-shows or missed appointments. These no-shows cost the US healthcare system more than $150 billion a year, and the regular appointment skippers often end up paying for more expensive emergency care in the long run.
So why do patients skip appointments without canceling? For most no-show patients, the circumstances vary from their busy lives to inefficient scheduling processes to their health issues and even transportation issues. Although patients are responsible for keeping appointments, no-shows put an enormous individual and collective strain on our healthcare system. A no-show often takes an appointment away from patients in need of urgent care, and the hospital or a clinic’s resources are ultimately wasted, costing the provider. Though punitive measures may be in place, these only warn patients for future occurrences and recover only a fraction of lost revenue while creating a negative experience for the patients. The best approach would be for providers to craft systems that help avoid no-shows.
A study published in the American Journal of Medicine in 2010 reported that the no-show rate was 23.1 percent for those who received no reminder, compared to 17.3 percent for those receiving an automated appointment reminder, and down to 13.6 percent if a staff member made a call.
Despite this improvement, human calls can be unreliable and add to the already piling workload of the care staff. To account for this, email and text reminders may be the best options. When tested, response rates for appointment reminders were significantly higher at 52 percent for text messages, 28 percent for emails, and 26 percent for phone reminders. Using an efficient system that sends email and text reminders based on patient preference and response may prove to be the perfect solution in curtailing no-show appointments for both patients and providers.2
Want to learn more about how MEDHOST can help reduce the no-show rates with the ability to send text and email reminders automatically? Contact us at inquiries@medhost.com or call 1.800.383.6278.
The integrated system of care has come to the community hospital as it seeks to improve patient results and lower costs.
Unlike the urban setting where this has become the de facto standard, community hospitals seldom have a wide selection of providers and facilities from which to craft this integrated system or the financial resources available to many large urban systems. Physician practices may be acquired, created, or just closely affiliated. These communities may have established nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, or other step-down facilities that are traditionally independent or owned by third parties. This environment makes care coordination difficult and inefficient as each encounter may start as a new patient and downstream follow-up is not digital.
When money is no object and decisions are made centrally, the easy answer is to rip out all existing IT systems and install a single platform. Most of us, however, live in the real world. We need to improve patient outcomes by enabling clinicians to order, schedule, and access data across the continuum of care while preserving existing IT investments. Recent Federal regulations recognize this problem and mandates such as prompted by the Cures Act are a step toward solving the problem. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of electronic health records and supporting systems that were built over a long period of time on different technology platforms, with different file formats and naming conventions, and different workflows. A seamless regulatory solution is improbable in the foreseeable future and it will likely be a very painful progression.
Just as the community hospital is the community’s healthcare hub, it must also be the IT hub for an integrated community of care. Today’s environment requires flexibility and use of both old and new interoperability tools, but the rewards are significant. MEDHOST community hospitals partnering with their electronic health record (EHR) provider can go beyond traditional interfaces to use new interoperability solutions that allow for more than just electronic order and results integration. Solutions can now also provide integrated community scheduling of services, automation of financial verification tasks, and workflow management tools. This type of solution allows hospitals to lower costs and maximize revenue while delivering a more seamless patient and provider experience.
YourCare Continuum® from MEDHOST enables our customers to craft communities of care while preserving IT investments and achieving a one-patient, one-record experience. Learn more about how we can help by contacting us at inquiries@medhost.com or calling 1.800.383.6278.
The Price Transparency mandate from The Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) was designed to provide patients with the ability to manage their healthcare through published prices for services and procedures.
This mandate creates opportunities for hospitals to create better patient experiences with enhanced financial clarity, but non-compliance risks fines and reputational consequences for hospitals beginning January 1, 2021. Greater risks may result from litigation or lost revenues from perpetuating poor billing practices.
The initial version of CMS’s price transparency rule was effective in January 2019. It required that hospitals publish standard list prices in a machine-readable format online. Enhancements to this initial rule were finalized in November 2019. The final rule requires hospitals to provide a consumer-friendly and searchable display of 300 shoppable services including gross and discounted cash prices, payer specific charges, and de-identified minimum and maximum charges on a publicly accessible website. This information must also be included in a machine-readable file. Legal challenges to the ruling and requests for delays due COVID-19 failed and the rule went into effect on January 1, 2021 as planned.1
This final rule comes with strict monetary penalties. Hospitals that do not meet the requirements under this rule may be subjected to a $300 per day fine, as well as the potential to lose Medicare payments altogether. Since mid-January, CMS has also publicly identified noncompliant hospitals by naming them on the CMS website. This disclosure not only affects a hospital’s reputation but creates a tort bar practice development tool.
CMS has announced that it has started auditing a sample of hospitals to ensure compliance with the rule and is asking the public to report noncompliance through a form on their website. Patients are encouraged to notify CMS if they can’t find a hospital’s standard charges online.
A noncompliant hospital may be asked to provide CMS with a corrective action plan. If the corrective action plan is not provided in a timely manner, then CMS will initiate monetary penalties and public shaming. Currently, CMS is not allowing hardship waivers or exemptions.
The Price Transparency solution from MEDHOST enables providers to comply with Price Transparency Policy. Learn more about how we can help you become compliant by contacting us at inquiries@medhost.com or calling 1.800.383.6278.
1 https://www.cms.gov/hospital-price-transparency
Hospital executives understand that strong relationships with individuals in their community are important to both community health and the financial health of the hospital.
While Patient Engagement is important and currently a hot topic, effective engagement starts before the individual becomes a patient and continues through and after instances of care. Community Hospitals invest today in a variety of free or unprofitable services to improve overall community health and to strengthen individual relationships. Examples include senior exercise classes or diabetes management classes. These programs, however, tend to focus on relatively narrow segments of the community. Inexpensive, common-sense approaches can broaden engagement efforts.
Start with good defense and don’t become disenfranchised by “big tech.” Many regulations to open access to patient records seem to be motivated by their efforts to be the focal point for healthcare data and information. Ensure your patient portal consolidates patient records and offers valuable content. Leverage those things that only your portal can provide, such as appointment reminders and bill payment. Regularly promote your portal and its features.
Consumers are inundated with information about health and wellness. It can be good, bad, and even dishonest, but mostly it has a commercial objective. Your hospital is a trusted brand in your community. You can provide regular engagement with individuals who may be prospective patients by leveraging that brand and trust. One good way is to build an extensive community mailing list and distribute a high-quality digital publication branded for your facility with content focused on a typical Community Hospital readership.
Good engagement also extends to independent clinicians in your community. Include them in your engagement efforts since many will not have the scale for a proprietary effort. Make sure that you have reduced technology barriers to good care and ease of use for both your inpatient and outpatient services.
MEDHOST is here for you. Through ongoing regulatory changes, we maintain a commitment to deliver timely, cost-effective solutions, to help hospitals save time and resources, reduce cost, maximize revenue, and create better experiences for the communities they serve.
Start preparing today. We’re here to help. To learn more, contact us at inquiries@medhost.com or call 1.800.383.6278.
Ken Misch, President and Chief Financial Officer of MEDHOST was interviewed by Senator Bill Frist on his healthcare podcast, A Second Opinion. A Second Opinion connects healthcare leaders and innovators around trends in the healthcare industry and overall health in general.
In this episode, Ken shares his personal story of overcoming adversity and how his health journey feeds his passion for making healthcare and the patient experience better. He details how he had to take a different approach to managing his personal health and similarly how thinking outside the box can positively impact the ever-changing healthcare industry.
He also discusses how rural healthcare is changing and how MEDHOST works with rural health systems to continue to meet their evolving needs. While rural hospitals continue to operate as the backbone of their communities, he notes that it’s important they continue to grow and expand their services outside of the four walls of their facilities.
Nurses are key players in almost every area of the hospital and influence multiple points along the care continuum. A 2017 report suggests that nurses are not only responsible for ensuring positive clinical outcomes, but also have quantifiable influence in the areas of finance, quality of care, and clinical team engagement.
Considering all the added pressures placed on nurses along with the fluidity of their core practices, the science of nursing is one of constant switching between tasks. During some of the more routine tasks of nursing, like creating plans of care, nurses are often taken away from the area they are needed most – the patient bedside. To reduce the amount of time on screens so nurses can concentrate on providing compassionate bedside care, they need care planning tools that provide efficiency and flexibility.
The following infographic illustrates how a clinician focused EHR can help nurses effectively create and manage plans of care, so they are spending less time chained to a computer screen.
To learn more about the MEDHOST’s Enterprise EHR solution and other clinical tools email us at inquiries@medhost.com or call 1.800.383.6278 to speak with one of our specialists.
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