Hallmark attracts new patients with online appointment booking · Hallmark attracts new patients with online appointment booking ... Ambulatory Services Team Hayes Management Consulting

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PRESENTED BY:

Hallmark attracts new patients with online appointment booking

Stacy M. Sheffield, R.N. – Hallmark Health Medical AssociatesAngela Hunsberger – Hayes Management Consulting

CHUG 2015Fall Conference

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Introductions

Stacy Sheffield, RNEMR OptimizerHallmark Health Medical Associates

• 2 years HHMA EMR Optimizer• 9 years experience at HHMA practices with

Centricity• Crystal Report certified

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Hallmark Health Medical Associates, Inc. (HHMA): group of more than 90 providers in nine local communities, roughly six miles north of Boston

23 clinics 120,000 visits

Specialties: • Primary care • OB/GYN • Endocrinology • Gastroenterology • General surgery • Bariatric surgery • Breast surgery • Infectious disease

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Introductions

Angela HunsbergerSenior Healthcare ConsultantAmbulatory Services TeamHayes Management Consulting

• 10 Years experience implementing, training, and optimizing Centricity

• Specialize in Optimizations of both PM, EMR and Portal

• 17 years in healthcare• Working with HHMA since 2012

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Disclaimer

Goal: Share our story of online appointment implementation process and our approach to a strategic planned rollout and optimization.

We hope you will gain a clear picture of what this technology and integration with CPS has to offer, and understand what it takes to put in motion. Then you can decide if this is a workable solution that supports your organizational goals.

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Objectives:

• Objective 1: Understand the online appointment interface functionality with Centricity scheduling.

• Objective 2: Get a glimpse of a high level implementation steps including all the challenges that come with a Centricity integration and changing provider schedules to make this work.

• Objective 3: Walk away understanding challenges or techniques for creative solutions to achieve maximum results using online appointment scheduling with Centricity.

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Agenda

• Why online scheduling?• Online booking workflow overview• Implementation Approach• Lessons Learned and Post Go‐Live Optimization• Results and Metrics

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Why Online Scheduling?

• Attracts new patients• Ability to schedule when the office is closed • Frees up staff by reducing phone calls• Leverages technology to improve operations and increase revenue and patient

satisfaction• Ultimately boils down to convenience for patients and staff

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• Zocdoc is one of many vendors on the market that allows patients to find providers and book appointments in Centricity in real time.

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How it works: • Patients go online and search for an appointment using a variety of criteria

options • Search returns list of nearby providers and available appointments • Patients can view provider profiles, read reviews, see pictures of the office, and

map the location

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• Patients can see the available appointments and choose a convenient appointment time

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• From staff workflow point of view: When patient books an appointment, our vendor provides an “alert” pop up that indicates the appointment was placed in the schedule

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• In Centricity, the appointment lists the visit reason in the appointment notes along with any other patient entered notes

• Once the appointment booked, staff may have some action items such as:

– Print online check‐in forms – Update Registration– If a new patient, call to gather insurance info, instruct to bring

card, ID, and meds to first visit.

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Implementation Approach

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• July 2014: The rollout completed in phased approach starting with a group of 25 providers at various locations

• 2 components to go‐live:– Setting up the provider profile online– Setting up Centricity schedules for the vendor to reference

• Vendor implementation team worked with the office managers to collect provider demographic data, schedule photos, etc. for their website

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• Angela, from Hayes, was brought in to work with the HHMA office managers and the vendor technical team. – She is the scheduling “guru” and had already worked with the managers on Centricity schedule

templates in the past

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• Challenge: The thought of patients booking their own appointments on the schedule made the office managers apprehensive

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• Solution: When patients search for available appointments online you still setup your schedule to control what patients see – Your schedule can be set up to show availability using a few options:

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• Option A: Yellow Slots Only– Patients will see any yellow time slots online as available time to book an appointment

• Any appointment allocations or blocks are ignored • This is the easiest and most flexible setup

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• Option B: Allocated Slots Only– Can choose which allocated slots will show for New Patients – Can choose which allocated slots will show for Established Patients

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• Half of the managers liked the option to read “all yellow” because it offered the most times for patients to book

• The other half wanted the most control so they chose to only show availability using “allocated” time slots

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• To take it a step further, we made 2 special appointment types– Added optional additional layer of control for the managers to use allocated slots that were

reserved for online appointments

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• More benefits of the online appointment types:– If allocated time slots are used, the special appointment type

communicates to scheduling staff which slots are reserved for online booking

• Staff instructed to book over unused slots as a last resort

– Visually flags online appointments and tracks online cancelations or no shows for reporting purposes

– Allows our automated appointment reminder vendor system to exclude online appointments

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• Regardless of how the manager decided to “read” the time slots, when the actual patient appointment was made, only these 2 appointment types would be “written/booked” on the Centricity schedule. – EVERY appointment made online would be either

• ZocDoc New Patient• ZocDoc Established Patient

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• A few practices decided to increase the standard lead time of 2 hours (up to 4 hours or 1 business day) – Gives the practice more time to prepare for the patient– Also some providers are not currently accepting new patients

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• After the manager decided on Yellow or Allocated, the next step was to look at the current schedule templates to see if they needed to be revised

• Revising and re‐assigning schedule templates can be tricky and will cause unnecessary work if not done carefully

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• Challenge: Working with the office managers to achieve maximum provider availability in the Centricity schedules with minimal interruption to existing office workflows– The good news is that the setup choice could be changed after go‐live so there was minimal risk

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• Angela worked with the vendor technical team to do back end mapping and testing

• Vendor team worked with office managers to finish up staff training and wrap up the provider online profile

• Last minute tweaks: Added a referral source choice for reporting purposes• Go‐Live for the first round went fairly seamlessly

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Lessons Learned

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• We also had a few technical issues such as:– Appointment Durations not flowing in perfectly

• Durations not matching• Unintentional Overbooking

– All availability not showing online– Appointments being erroneously placed over “blocked” time

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• Our vendor does not require patients to enter an address– Since the address is a required field in Centricity, placeholder text is

populated which causes a problem for us and we are still currently working on a resolution

– Special characters entered by the patient can not be prevented. These can potentially cause claim rejections if not caught and fixed by staff in Registration

• Patients and online communication– Some patients not responsive to phone calls if information is needed prior to

their appointment. You will have this for any patient, but more so the electronically savvy patients.

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• Patients found a way “to get in sooner” using reserved slots online.• Issues with Reschedule/Cancel/No Show workflows

– Staff has to go in Centricity AND the online dashboard to report.

• Cannot use double allocated slots for mapping.– Had to revise some templates

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• There is some ongoing maintenance with online appointments:– If templates change, vendor may need notified– If appointment types change, vendor may need notified and templates will need updated

and maybe even visit reasons/durations on website– If providers decide to accept or not accept new patients– If providers start seeing patients at another facility (or change suite numbers)– If office hours/days of the week change– If a provider leaves the practice– Age limits of who can book online

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Lessons Learned

• The easiest and lowest maintenance option for mapping online appointment scheduling is to map to Yellow Slots!

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Post Go-Live Optimization

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• Most vendors typically provide a helpful availability report or analysis • Performed audits on schedule templates and daily schedules

– Staff manually blocking slots on daily schedule – Schedule template set up to “read yellow” but found blocked allocated slots on daily schedule – Some providers still hesitant to offer many online slots

• Worked with vendor to do technical audits– All availability not always shown on website– These were fixed right away

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• Perform regular audits to catch anything that may have been missed or changed

– Tip: Audit both vendor and the schedules in Centricity

– Tip: Keep a running master list of each provider’s online configurations.

– Tip: Keep a “Implementation, Audit, and Maintenance Guide” on a shared drive. Many moving parts can get missed.

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Results

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Patient Feedback:• “You made everything so easy. I was able to clearly see my appointment

options and get something that worked with my schedule”

• “It's easy, and accurate, and the doctors are great!”

• “Ease of use, getting the paperwork done ahead of time”

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Metrics

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Metrics

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Thank you!

[email protected]/company/hayes‐management‐consulting

You can also find us at:

Questions?

Hayes CHUG contact: Lorie Richardson, LPNDirector, Account ManagementPrincipal Healthcare [email protected]

Angela HunsbergerSenior Healthcare [email protected]

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Hayes Service Lines

• Optimize technology and improve operations efficiency

• Craft strategic and tactical plans specific to organizational needs

• Optimize/transform revenue cycle, reduce costs, streamline operations and eliminate waste

• Automates and streamlines auditing process

Clinical/IT Consulting

Revenue Cycle Consulting

Strategic Consulting

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Hallmark attracts new patients with online appointment booking · Hallmark attracts new patients with online appointment booking ... Ambulatory Services Team Hayes Management Consulting