An Integrated Scheduling System -- What's at Stake
Enhanced Revenue Generation
Enhanced Utilization of Staff & Facilities
Enhanced Scheduling Efficiency
Enhanced Customer Service

THE INTEGRATED APPOINTMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The Integrated Appointment Management System, the IAMSystem, offers

• patient referral and admission management;

• enterprise-wide scheduling linked to charge entry, patient notes, and documentation;

• and case management, i.e., insurance authorization tracking.

  

An Integrated Scheduling System -- What's at Stake

In today's complex managed-care environment the IAMSystem allows a healthcare corporation to manage its business proactively and to improve profitability by providing fast, timely, and accurate tracking and analysis

• of services provided,

• of scheduling of patients for multiple services,

• of insurance and billing information,

• and of  the performance and utilization of the valuable resources of personnel, facilities, and equipment.

The IAMSystem is saving healthcare institutions hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by reducing bad debt, ensuring optimal utilization of expensive resources, and at the same time improving customer satisfaction.

An on-line scheduling system is the first step in moving toward a seamless system of coordinated care for your clients. On-line scheduling alleviates patient, resource, and staff scheduling conflicts, decreases patient waiting time, and ultimately increases patient satisfaction. It allows for rapid coordination of appointments and access to patient information, saving staff time at every patient encounter.

Combined with the ability to enter charges directly from scheduled appointments, as well as a mechanism for tracking insurance authorizations, an integrated scheduling system enables providers to manage their business proactively, that is, specifically before events leading to bad debt write-offs occur. The system also ensures that all scheduled services are accounted for -- charged, canceled, or rescheduled -- to maximize revenue. Our clients have seen a significant increase in their accounts receivable and decrease in data entry labor expense once our system is in place to automate the charge entry process. There are no more lost or forgotten charge slips, nor is it necessary to enter redundant patient information for multiple departments.

In the past a healthcare provider could schedule referred patients with little or no information obtained at the time of appointment. The provider could obtain the patient information needed for billing on the day the service was to be provided. The provider would then perform the service, submit a charge, send a bill, and receive close to 100% reimbursement of those charges. There was little or no work to be done on the part of the patient or provider after the appointment was scheduled and before the patient arrived to receive services.

Today, with the advent of managed-care and below-cost payers, the provider needs to obtain more accurate information, e.g., type of insurance, policy number, medical history, etc., from the patient at the time of scheduling in order to secure reimbursement. The type of insurance can dictate how a provider must coordinate services for the patient and what action a patient or provider needs to take before the patient receives that service. One insurer may require pre-authorization for a certain service while another may not.

An integrated scheduling system alerts the scheduling clerk and the patient to the fact that the services being scheduled require pre-authorization at the time of scheduling. The system also tracks the number of visits and days or dollars authorized for each service and issues warnings that further authorization is necessary in order to continue treatment. These features contribute to proper discharge planning, reduction in labor hours spent counting visits, and reduction of bad-debt write-offs.

Raising the level of awareness of both staff and patients to the need of pre-authorizations at the time of scheduling is just one example of how an automated system can help to truly manage your business with an eye on the bottom line while maintaining a high level of customer service.

The IAMSystem enables a facility to centralize certain functions, such as patient registration, scheduling, and fiscal clearance. With patient and provider schedules maintained on-line, a facility can schedule multiple services across locations, based on a single phone call from the patient. A patient need not call several different departments to schedule each respective service. Rules can be entered for each service so that the specialized knowledge of individual clinicians or departmental schedulers can be made available to a centralized scheduling bureau.

The system identifies those managed-care patients who are scheduled for services but have no authorization currently on the system. Such information is accessible from a central location.

Strong reporting features for all modules allow for the automation of statistical reporting. Comprehensive data about business operations support measurable improvements in efficiency, productivity, and financial control. The task of manually counting the number of patient visits and treatments, cancellation and reschedule rates, billed revenue, insurance authorizations, provider utilization, and scheduled appointments is eliminated. This feature results in a significant decrease of labor expense, in increased revenue, and in the opportunity to restructure current operations.

An automated system which accords the opportunities outlined above allows a facility to provide patients and referral sources with the highest level of customer service while allowing for the opportunity to improve upon existing operational processes.

The Integrated Appointment Management System from T4 Healthcare offers the following benefits.

  

Enhanced Revenue Generation

	Monitor trends in scheduled, charged, canceled, rescheduled, and wait listed patient and provider appointments, increasing direct patient care time available for clinicians and improving rescheduling  rate.
	Increase revenue through automated charge entry; guarantee that all scheduled events are either charged, canceled, or rescheduled.
	Recoup potentially lost revenue by booking into canceled time slots (average cancellation rates are 12% to 18%).
	Decrease accounts receivable days outstanding -- charges are updated to the patients' accounts each  night -- bills can be sent to carriers more quickly.
	Automate tracking of insurance authorizations, decreasing labor expense, decreasing managed-care  bad debt, and increasing accounts receivable.
	Track lost revenue to the source.
	Provide co-payment reminder for all scheduled patients who have plans requiring one; improve co-payment collection at time of registration.
	Schedule hospital-based services from remote locations, enhancing patient retention.
	Provide on-line documentation to support JCAHO and Medical Records requirements and decrease labor responding to insurance requests for documentation.

  

Enhanced Utilization of Staff & Facilities    

	Decrease time spent managing patient and provider appointments.
	Afford the opportunity to centralize scheduling operations.
	Improve communication of patient and provider information among all departments.
	Unburden Central Registration from manual patient tracking.
	Reduce labor hours of clinicians doing support staff duties.
	Increase clinician productivity by managing schedules more tightly.
	Improve monitoring of utilization and volume of ancillary departments.
	Allocate more time to patient care and less to statistical reporting.
	Cross train staff for constant coverage without interruption.
	Free secretarial time to do transcriptions, reports, service patients arrival.
	Decrease time spent tracking insurance authorizations.
	Consolidate support staff from ancillary departments.
	Reduce incoming and internal telephone traffic between facilities and departments.
	Decrease time in coordinating appointments between different departments and within departments.

  

Enhanced Scheduling Efficiency

	Standardize scheduling and pre-registration processes.
	Simplify patient scheduling across disciplines, including gathering of patient information.
	Simplify maintenance and updating of patient and provider schedules.
	Cancel, reschedule, and wait list appointments quickly and easily.
	Reduce time wasted working with handwritten patient schedules.
	Change schedules quickly without losing pertinent information.
	Maintain and allow access to the specialized rules of scheduling for each department.
	Eliminate multiple appointment books.
	Schedule recurring appointments much more quickly than by manual entry.
	Schedule multi-site, multi-service visits from any location.
	Alert to patient and provider scheduling conflicts system-wide.
	Assign and examine multiple and group scheduling quickly.
	Provide rapid block scheduling arbitrarily into the future.
	Coordinate and track multiple ancillary visits.
	Access information on patients visits, past and future, immediately.
	Optimize sequential appointments for customer convenience.

  

Enhanced Customer Service

	Improve communication with patients and referral sources.
	Provide more time to service patients, doctors, and hospital staff.
	Improve coordination of patient visits and care.
	Reduce redundant data collection in the registration process.
	Eliminate scheduling conflicts.
	Improve patient education of insurance requirements
	Improve data collection at the time of first phone call; decrease multiple phone calls to the patient during the registration process.
	Improve patient access to all services within the system.