Enterprise Communications
Solution Set
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Patient Statement System
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Global Works Patient Statement System Pays for Itself at University of Utah Health Sciences Center
"Global Works offered us more say in the statement design, such as what we wanted to include and suppress on our statements. We also liked that PSS is already integrated with IDX and that Global Works people know IDX products well."
Brenda Densley, UUHSC System Analyst
The Problem
Who among us has never received a bill that didn't make sense – not a bill that
we didn't want to pay, but one that didn't clearly show how much to pay, for what,
to whom, and by when?
The University of Utah Health Sciences Center was receiving 8000 calls a month from patients wanting to discuss their statements. Says Karen Wilson, Director of Patient Financial Services, "Statements
have always been a source of complaint from our patients. We had made as many modifications as possible without doing acomplete overhaul, but our volume of calls indicated that we needed a clearer statement."The quest for a vendorand product began, and ul-timately, Global Works' Patient Statement System (PSS) was chosen. "Global Works offered us more say in the statement design, such
as what we wanted to include and suppress on our statements," notes UUHSC System Analyst Brenda Densley. "We also liked that PSS is already integrated with IDX and that Global Works people
know IDX products well."
Return on Investment
Eight months later, PSS has paid for itself with a drop of $10,000 a month in production costs and a five percent increase in patient payments.
Several factors contribute to the lowered production costs. With the statement redesign, Billing Services is now sending out fewer information-only statements, combining the info-only and regular statement files. Patients are also paying on earlier statements, necessitating fewer successive
statements. As a result, UUHS has been able to reduce its volume of monthly statements by 30,000, or
about twenty percent.
Customer Service, Patient Satisfaction
The administrators are happy. The trees are happy. What about the patients?
They still have bills to pay, but as the numbers show, they are paying more readily. They have also
stopped calling as much, with Customer Service calls
down by more than 12%. "We aren't getting the Idon't- understand-what-thismeans calls any-more," Ms.
Wilson reports.
At the same time, because PSS allows users to view a replica of a patient's statement on their screens, customer service reps are able to provide more effective assistance when patients do call. "Now they can direct the patient where to look on the statement. It gives them more credibility," says Ms. Wilson.
In addition to reprints, users can also generate ad hoc statements, selecting from myriad criteria, such as posting or service dates, FSC's, and minimum/ maximum balances.
Statement Design Process
Each PSS client has its own ideal statement design. At UUHSC, the design was conceived and approved by a group made up of billing managers, IS department staff, and medical group executive committee members. The statement went through a number of drafts, each of which was cycled through the Global Works installation team led by Project Manager Jeff Hill and Software Architect
Justin Eatinger. "Jeff and Justin accommodated every request without giving us grief," says Ms. Densley.
While surely it's a relief to settle on a final design, it's helpful to know that once the statement
has been finalized, it need not be set in stone. Because statements are created in MS Word, clients
can make small to moderate changes without even needing to depend on the vendor.
Indeed, one of Karen Wilson's chief concerns with selecting a product was with after-thefact statement modifications. "We were anticipating changes in our self-pay system and wanted to know that our statement vendor could accommodate them. Global Works offered the flexibility we needed."
Clear Statements, Prompt Payments
Production costs are down. Payments are up. University of Utah Health Science
Center's clearer statements have paid off. Luc de Clapier de Vauvanargues wrote, "Clearness ornaments
profound thoughts." Perhaps more mundanely, clearness also gets the bills paid.
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