HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT OF YOUR PATIENT PRE-REGISTRATION PROCESS

 Introduction: 

Are you tired of standing in long queues to fill out a registration form in a healthcare center? 

Patient registries' approach evolved across and over 150 years, culminating with the Nationwide Disease Record of Norway in 1856. The patient registration process has been in use for many years, with the medical clinics having to do a lot of paperwork. With the arrival of computers, this concept has changed a lot.

The healthcare business is constantly evolving. Healthcare facilities have begun the transition to Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems and are beginning to implement new technologies to make the task quick and straightforward with efficiency. This project aims to design a patient registration process that works within an EHR system while maintaining a level of professionalism, privacy, and security.

The recent trend has been to go paperless by using laptops and tablets. And today, it's easier than ever for patients to register online and in advance of their appointment. This allows patients to complete their registration forms right at the waiting area instead of being called one by one. Modern medical billing practices offer online scheduling, electronic health records, and the ability to complete forms from a smartphone or tablet.

Why is patient registration important?

Do we all know what patient registration is? But to sum up with this, Registration is the method of recording a patient's name and identity in the hospital system. This is an important step for streamlining the onboarding and intake process, which is frequently slowed by complex data collecting and administrative activities. 

The purpose of the pre-registration process is to assists all hospitals and physicians in accessing any patient information anytime at anywhere. Getting comprehensive and correct information from patients at the point-of-service and effectively recording the data in your system is not only crucial to the success of your revenue cycle but also allows multivariate population health analytics.

How do you need to design a patient pre-registration process?

Beginning with a thorough self-assessment, healthcare organizations should establish their pre-registration processes. Which present components are practical? What ones aren't? Where are patients chosen to leave with unanswered questions, and where is the patient flow slowing down?

Rather than relying on "yes" or "no" responses from the patient, asking open-ended questions that necessitate a comprehensive response, ensuring you have the most up-to-date information. This creates a higher quality customer experience and greater patient satisfaction by collecting patient intake materials before the appointment.

Electronic techniques, such as particular onboarding systems or solutions inside the EHR, should also be considered by organizations.

A Texas-based rehabilitation hospital used automation techniques to reduce registration processing time. They have dumped all the conventional registration systems and started automating every stage of the process. 

That's how the hospital managed to minimize weeks into just a handful of days. 

Improvements might be as basic as phone conversations with new patients before appointments or mailed registration forms.

The American Medical Association stated to send patients a confirmation mail with all pre-registration instructions, including a list of their drugs, allergies, and medical history. Pre-registration over the phone or in-person will save time and increase accuracy.

Succeeding with designing, how do you “Develop” a pre-registration? 

Several factors need to be considered to develop a patient registration process in a hospital. Some of these factors include the number of patients that come to the hospital, the number of forms that need to be filled, the number of doctors and other staff members, and the number of visitors that arrive at the hospital.

Organizations should develop a pre-registration script after identifying objectives and agreements of a practice or the healthcare organization. A healthcare organization must establish which data points must be collected from a new patient to ensure that the staff member does not miss a tip or forget to ask the patient a vital question. 

The first step towards developing a patient registration process is identifying the type of information you wish to collect from the patient.  This could be personal details like name, age, and address. It could also include information regarding their medical condition if they have any allergies, what medications they are under, etc. The registration process is also used for making appointments, sending notices, and other related things. 

By providing sample reference text, a patient or a member can quickly identify in which fields it's mandatory to fill out the information. Also, the hospital should have a well-organized database that will help keep track of all the patients and their requirements. 

Once developing this pre-registration practice, in what ways you can execute without getting any flaws.

Are your front-desk staff knowledgeable? How to educate them?

Most importantly, you need to train the front-desk or staff members to enter correct patient information immediately into your practice's systems during the new patient's interaction, rather than having them fill out a paper form and then re-entering or scanning the information into the record. 

• Ensure all possible information’s are collected from the patient to fulfill the important goals by assisting patients with the pre-registration procedure, 

• Scheduling the patient's appointment, providing the patient with a copy of the appointment date/time, and directing the patient to your practice, 

• Informing the patient about any items that should be brought to the appointment, Checking the patient's insurance eligibility, and advising the patient of any co-pay amounts needed at the time of service,

• Obtaining precise and complete demographic, insurance, and medical information, Scheduling any laboratory or other tests following the guidelines of your practice, 

• Responding to inquiries concerning the registration procedure, practice, and medical team

What are the mandatory fields to be collected? In what areas most of the errors will arise? If you miss out, what will be the drawbacks? And how do EHR systems help in identifying those errors?

Following these best practices for patient registration is necessary for healthcare businesses to prevent losing out to competitors. Make sure you examine and verify basic information at the start of your patient registration process. 

• Obtain correct patient's legal name with correct spelling, which must match when compared to a member identification card, along with the last name, such as Sr., Jr., or II., III., and date of birth

• Select the correct gender. If the gender is incorrect, the lab procedures or tests performed may not be right.

• Get patient’s correct contact information, Social Security Number SSN, emergency contact details, and subscriber's information(must if the patient is an infant)

• Obtain accident information or injury information

• Verify valid and active patient’s insurance information

Most of the errors occur mostly from the fields mentioned above and thus they end up with denials. If any of these fields are mistakenly entered or mismatched, or left out empty, there are chances that both the patient and the provider can result in a lawsuit.

With the increasing use of applications and a larger volume of patient data, there are chances of getting duplications while registering patient information. By 2015, 96% of hospitals have certified EHR software to record patient information. Automated EHR systems inpatient registration will help us identify these duplications, save time, improve the process efficiency, and also aids in attaining customer satisfaction. 

Data on how errors occur

A recent study of voluntary reporting found that patient misidentification was implicated with 11% in 54 neonatal critical care units in the United States. 22% of it was because of administration errors. Also, over 100 incidences of patient misidentification were reported to the Veterans Affairs National Center for patient safety throughout a three-year study. 

A nationwide sample of 712 hospitals revealed 5.5% mistake rates for patient mislabeling and misidentification. Approximately, half of these incidents included multiple contradictory information of 18.3%, insufficient information with errors of 17.5%, erroneous information 8.6%, or unreadable data 8.6% and less than 1% of cases, contains data from another patient.

Keep HIPAA compliance and data protection in mind:

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is federal legislation that mandated the development of national standards to prevent sensitive patient health information from being revealed without the patient's knowledge or agreement. The law has gained attention in recent years due to the numerous health data breaches caused by cyberattacks and ransomware attacks on health insurers and providers.

HIPAA, officially known as Public Law 104-191, has two purposes: it provides continuous health insurance coverage for people who leave or change jobs. It eventually reduces healthcare costs by standardizing the electronic exchange of accounting and management operations.

Patient satisfaction through this pre-registration process:

One performance metric of health care quality is patient satisfaction. A study defined three domains of patient experience: delivering essential medical treatment; treatments sought by patients and family members (which may or may not be beneficial to good health); and provider activities and behaviors that comprise compassionate care and the protection of human dignity.

Patient satisfaction surveys are widely employed as measuring methods since they are not observable. Patient satisfaction surveys convert subjective results into useful, quantitative, and actionable information.

Survey:

The patient experience is quickly becoming a significant component in healthcare. Do you know what your patients think of your medical facility? Are they satisfied with your procedures and the overall level of care they receive? If you are unsure, it may be time to conduct a patient satisfaction survey, which provides a simple way to uncover hidden concerns at your health facility. 

A study revealed that among the total respondents, Communication with doctors was rated as satisfactory by 51% of respondents, while communication with nurses was rated as unsatisfactory by 53.9%. The majority of respondents, 57.1% were unsatisfied with the physical environment of the hospitals, while the majority of respondents 62.3% were dissatisfied with pharmaceutical provision. 59.3% of those polled reported getting all their prescription medications from the hospital pharmacy. The majority of respondents, 55.9% were registered on time, and 54.2% waited 1-2 hours following registration to see a doctor.

Conclusion: 

The traditional health care revenue cycle begins after a patient is examined and a claim was submitted to the insurer. A new health care revenue cycle begins as soon as the appointment is arranged. Protecting payer reimbursements and improving patient collections must take place on the front end, or they will not take place at all. As a result, pre-registration is the most crucial stage in revenue cycle management. The link between scheduling and admittance protects the health care provider's financial interests while also providing a convenient service to the patient, resulting in a better experience for all.

This article mainly emphasizes the registration to ensure that denials get reduced with increased revenue.

BillingParadise provides medical billing services and medical coding services. Our experience in a variety of medical billing disciplines ensures that insurance reimbursements are processed quickly and accurately.

Contact us at info@billingparadise.com / 888-571-9069 to know more about our entire medical billing and coding services.