Patient Access Pulse: Recent Episodes
PELITAS
Welcome to Patient Access Pulse with PELITAS. Listen in as we talk leading industry topics including current challenges, solutions, and trends within healthcare.
As healthcare revolutionizes to meet interoperability needs, so does the technology. iPAS Version 10 (v10) is one data management tool driving the transformation. Kristine Anderson, Vice President of Solutions Management at Pelitas, and Tracy Eckerman, Associate Vice President of Technical Solutions Management, met with host Tyler Kern to explain exactly how.
The pandemic accelerated tech too creation to meet various healthcare needs, such as patient access, telehealth, and virtual intake. The virtual intake medicine suite was one of the first products iPAS v10 launched; it involves the patient so they are an active participant in their care management.
While helpful, the variety of tools has presented challenges, creating siloed data if not properly integrated. “Interoperability is going to be absolutely critical in this next year for being able to leverage all of those tools,” explained Eckerman. Next year, the plan is to deepen integration opportunities. “It’s really going to be exciting to build on what we’ve already done and take the product to the next level,” said Anderson.
Pierce called the act a “positive one” for patients. However, she noted that implementation is challenging. “It’s going to be difficult for revenue cycle teams because there are many individual players in siloes with processes.”
Huddleston added, “It’s the right thing for patients, but it puts a heavy burden on patient access teams.”
Pierce explained what would be necessary to operationalize. “We have to educate team members, build tools and processes, and rely on technology.”
According to Pierce and Huddleston, one of the biggest hurdles is who is in and out of network. Depending on which bucket patients fall into—insured (out of or in network) and the uninsured—there are different notices necessary. There are disclaimers, good faith estimates, and disclosures. If not handled compliantly, it can be costly.
“Compliance is key, and we encourage our revenue cycle leaders to be as compliant as possible. There’s a $10,000 fine per occurrence, and we don’t want to incur that. We want to do right by the patient and put them first,” Pierce explained.
To ensure that providers and payers execute, Huddleston explained that the PELITAS software platform now has built-in features to handle the legislation. “ We are ready to help providers maintain compliance with our patient responsibility estimator and virtual intake tool.”
Holyoak saw a shift toward safety focus, both for patients and to protect staff during the pandemic. Remote work became a priority as there was drive to make the digital patient experience come to life and for patients to receive care in safe environments. Reck explained, “A lot off the things that we’ve seen as far as focus in the last two years were already on the priority list but just adjusted the priorities based on the state of the environment.” He added,” The fact that the pandemic occurred took something that may have taken five, ten years to put in place to be an immediate concern and an urgent priority.”
Patients are also being seen more as having needs of consumers and the healthcare industry is trying to meet this experience. For example, similar to curbside grocery pickup, patients expect things to be consumer-like, such as being able to fill out intake forms beforehand.
As for the future of healthcare, the demographic is aging and is not as familiar with technology, so it needs to be presented in an easily accessible yet secure manner. Reck also sees need to continue extending integration and interoperability from PELITAS's platform to all other platforms to decrease productivity drain. Leveraging artificial intelligence will remain key.
Perhaps the most important aspect is to continue to look at the patient engagement side of this and evolve. “Continuing to find ways to engage the patient in his or her healthcare journey, whether it is administrative, whether it is clinical, I think that is really important,” Holyoak summarized.
Holyoak saw a shift toward safety focus, both for patients and to protect staff during the pandemic. Remote work became a priority as there was drive to make the digital patient experience come to life and for patients to receive care in safe environments. Reck explained, “A lot off the things that we’ve seen as far as focus in the last two years were already on the priority list but just adjusted the priorities based on the state of the environment.” He added,” The fact that the pandemic occurred took something that may have taken five, ten years to put in place to be an immediate concern and an urgent priority.”
Patients are also being seen more as having needs of consumers and the healthcare industry is trying to meet this experience. For example, similar to curbside grocery pickup, patients expect things to be consumer-like, such as being able to fill out intake forms beforehand.
As for the future of healthcare, the demographic is aging and is not as familiar with technology, so it needs to be presented in an easily accessible yet secure manner. Reck also sees need to continue extending integration and interoperability from PELITAS's platform to all other platforms to decrease productivity drain. Leveraging artificial intelligence will remain key.
Perhaps the most important aspect is to continue to look at the patient engagement side of this and evolve. “Continuing to find ways to engage the patient in his or her healthcare journey, whether it is administrative, whether it is clinical, I think that is really important,” Holyoak summarized.
Patient access is a difficult job, and one made even more challenging during the COVID19 pandemic. Steven Huddleston, CEO and President of PELITAS, and Beau Beasley, Vice President of Revenue Cycle at Methodist Le Bonheur Hospital, spoke about the difficulties of labor shortages in patient access and how to navigate barriers towards a successful outcome for healthcare organizations.
“It (patient access) is a challenging job that is ever-increasing in regulations and requirements, and having patient access staff then go through the COVID environment I think really put a spotlight on that job,” Beasley said. “And when you couple that with other service industries that we know of that have increased wages consistently, or having sign-on bonuses, it has made a difference in people’s choices.” So, with these labor shortages, the natural question is, how do healthcare organizations navigate the shift?
Huddleston sees the challenge as one of increased complexity in the job requirements of the patient access role and compensation not keeping up with the pace of those changes. “If I’m an individual making a choice, and the field’s pretty level from hospitality, fast-food, and manufacturing, I’m probably going to elect to go that route versus a high-pressure role, with high technical requirements.”
“We have to start thinking of ways that we can reduce our physical footprint in the patient access arena,” Beasley said in regards to the the long-term solution for navigating out of this labor crisis in patient access. And this is where partnerships with software solutions providers like PELITAS can help.
“And while patient access does still have a physical element to it, there are certain areas within there that we can leverage, with a software solution, while at the same time empower our patients to take more control of their patient access experience,” Beasley explained.