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COVID-19 is beginning to stress the healthcare system, and typical protocols are being upended. But health systems and medical groups are already rising to the challenge of getting patients tested while, at the same time, prioritizing the protection of their communities and staffs. Below are some solutions being implemented: Online screening Many providers are tapping into online scheduling solutions, responding to the COVID-19 crisis with simple splash pages. Posting questions that screen for symptoms can channel patients seeking testing/treatment for COVID-19 down a specific pathway to get the care they need. Those who need other types of care can still book through the solution, directing them to the right provider and appointment. Screening paths allow access to be prioritized and managed accordingly. Mobile testing Providers are also using mobile test units. These enable providers to administer more tests in a geographically diverse manner, without having to expose their internal clinic and hospital environments to contagion. Patients can simply drive through and receive a test while remaining in their car. Some health systems are combining this with online scheduling, allowing patients to schedule appointment slots for testing. This helps manage the flow of patients, reducing call center volume. Health plans are also modifying Some health plans are taking a similar approach, using mobile testing units and a call center scheduling platform to book testing appointment slots for members. Likewise, they can send a link enabling members to self-schedule for a testing slot via text message or email. This type of proactive member engagement to vulnerable populations is key to reducing the impact on Emergency Departments, while helping diagnose individuals so they can get the care they need. Call center operations Call centers are being overwhelmed with volume – and there is more to come. New methodologies to handle the response are complementing normal operations. Some providers have started to publish a dedicated line for COVID-19 calls that connects to a separate call center pod. Others have quickly added scheduling protocols in the scheduling system to route patients to the right care, or mobile-testing unit, based on responses to the questions agents ask. By automating the Q&A in the platform, patients are guided to the right care, and agents need minimal training to assure accuracy. As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to grow in the U.S., more tactics will be introduced to streamline scheduling, testing and care. Technology will certainly be one key lever for healthcare providers to better serve their communities and keep patients and staff safe.

The number of uninsured American adults has been rising steadily since 2016, reaching a four-year high of 13.7% in the last quarter of 2018. The challenges have been well-documented: low levels of health insurance contribute to health inequality, poor population health, and worse outcomes for individuals as people hold off seeking care. For providers, a growing uninsured population usually leads to an uptick in uncompensated care and a hefty blow to their balance sheet. Affordability is the main driver of this trend (due to rising premiums and tighter household budgets), but a big part of the problem is simply confusion around who is entitled to what. People may have coverage they don’t know about or have forgotten. Media reports and reduced outreach for Obamacare have left many wondering whether support from public insurers is even still available: a Kaiser Family Foundation study in 2018 found that around a third of Americans believed or weren’t sure if the Affordable Care Act had already been repealed. No wonder fewer people are signing up. Finding missing coverage is a challenge for most providers, but with the right discovery strategy, it’s possible to drive down the number of accounts ending up in bad debt collections or written off as charity designations. Top-performing providers use a four-part strategy, encompassing the following: 1. Look beyond self-pay patients For most healthcare providers, the search for missing coverage usually focuses on self-pay patients. In fact, many Medicaid, Medicare and commercially insured patients also have unknown additional coverage. Unearthing this secondary and tertiary coverage can help ensure the full amount is paid. Jason Considine, Senior Vice President and GM of Patient Experience at Experian Health, says: “Finding missing secondary or tertiary coverage for patients with Medicaid or Medicare can help hospitals capture the full amounts they’re entitled to and reduce the risk of revenue loss. Hospitals can claim against any balances not covered by public payers, but only if they look for additional coverage.” This means hospitals shouldn’t focus solely on scrubbing self-pay accounts. By searching additional commercial coverage and combing through Medicare and Medicaid coverage, you might be surprised at the level of reimbursement available for amounts that would otherwise have been written off. 2. Perform coverage checks as soon as possible The sooner you check for coverage, the sooner you can verify the accuracy of the account – and the sooner you can get paid. Essentia Health in Minnesota implemented a coverage discovery strategy that ran comprehensive coverage checks throughout the whole patient process. Patient accounts were scanned before they received care, then again at the time of service. Finally, searches for active insurance were performed 30, 60 and 90 days after service. Kathryn Wrazidlo, Patient Access Director for Essentia Health, says: “We found 67% of coverage for patient accounts that were self-pay or uninsured at the time of pre-service, and 33% at the time of post-service. This has helped patients because we’re actually billing their insurance versus billing them for self-pay. It’s helping staff because they’re billing the insurance company much quicker. There’s less rework. We’re decreasing the amount of time the account is sitting in AR by billing much sooner in the process.” 3. Access the widest possible datasets The whole point of the coverage discovery process is to track down coverage your patient doesn’t know about. So why would you limit your search to what they can tell you? Equally, searching through payer databases within what are often very limited search parameters can be a painstaking process. A more logical approach is to use a search strategy that covers historical data, demographic information and multiple proprietary datasets to cross-check patient accounts for previously unknown coverage. A tool that offers weighted confidence scoring and discrepancy checks can further reduce the risk of false positives and errors. With this approach, Experian Health’s Coverage Discovery tool analyzed more than 16.6 million accounts and found 3.6 million coverages, resulting in $5.8 billion billable charges found in 2018 alone. 4. Digest the data with reliable reporting tools Of course, checking more accounts and accessing wider datasets means you’re going to have far more data to handle. Automated scrubbing tools, quick-look dashboards and reporting software can give you instant access to the information you need. Working with a reliable partner can help you sift the data for additional coverage, and also provide insights into ways to boost workflow efficiencies and make life easier for your team too. Wrazidlo says: “We use the power reporting that’s offered with the Experian product and we also do reporting internally. The reporting helps us know whether the product is working for us or not. We can see how much we are recovering… My staff really enjoy using it.” Find out more about how Coverage Discovery could help you find additional coverage more easily, so you can get paid sooner and in full.

Any kind of identity mix-up is disturbing, but when it occurs within the healthcare system, the fallout can be severe. At best, misidentifying patients leads to lowered consumer confidence, but at worst it can compromise a person’s essential medical treatment. As a healthcare professional, you want to be absolutely certain that comprehensive and correct data is associated with each person who comes in for care, and that you’re utilizing the most advanced measures to make it happen. Universal patient identifiers are an integral part of that goal.  Patient Safety Awareness Week is the perfect time to convey that message clearly and positively. What is Patient Safety Awareness Week Patient Safety Awareness Week, organized by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, is an annual recognition event dedicated to boosting the public’s knowledge about health care safety. In 2020, it runs from March 8th to the 14th. Patient Safety Awareness Week is your ideal opportunity to proactively inform and reassure patients of your commitment to safety. New systems, such as universal patient identifiers (UPI) developed by Experian Health, were created to ensure that patient demographics are as complete and error-free as possible through patient matching. Impact of patient identity problems Many patients may already have concerns about their records, having heard about problems from the news, friends or relatives, or have personally experienced identity misidentification. According to an ECRI Institute report, approximately 30% of the patient data that’s held in electronic health records is either incomplete or inaccurate. So how bad can the damage of patient misidentification be? The Ponemon Institute reported that roughly 86% of all clinicians witnessed a medical error that was caused by patient misidentification. And most disturbing: a study by the National Institutes of Health discovered more than half of all the deaths attributed to medical errors are a result of identity errors. Identification mistakes don’t just lead to unnecessary patient suffering either. These unforced errors undermine the very foundation of healthcare organization: trust. The organization that makes them suffers a serious blow to their brand. How patient identity mistakes are made Human error has been most often to blame for patient identity mistakes. Every day, healthcare providers handle an astonishing influx of information, as hundreds of thousands of electronic patient records flow in from a vast number of different systems and departments. All the while patients’ names and addresses change, which in turn requires updates. Inputting all that data manually is a major challenge, and inconsistencies typically occur in the data entry process. In fact, the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that the greatest proportion of mismatches are centered around a patient’s middle name and their Social Security numbers. Misspellings and entering first, last, and middle names into the wrong fields are also common. Once identity mistakes are entered, a patient can have duplicate records and disparate facts, matching past diagnoses and prescribed medications. Billing problems, too, can result. A patient’s statements might not be sent to the correct mailing address, resulting in them experiencing unnecessary credit troubles. Solutions to identity problems In order to consistently and correctly match patients with their medical records, innovative technology has been developed. UPIs use Experian’s consumer demographic information and methodologies to identify record matches and duplicates in a patient’s file. Once a unique UPI is created for the patient, the potential for identification mix-ups is vastly reduced. More, UPIs lead to efficiencies that drive costs down for all concerned. It’s expensive and laborious for healthcare provider employees to record and update such a high volume of patient data by hand. Rectifying mistakes is not only time-consuming, it can cause insurance issues to arise. Certainly, obtaining the best treatment is paramount to patients, but keeping healthcare costs to a minimum is also important. 79 million Americans are struggling with overwhelming medical liabilities, found The Commonwealth Fund. However, a survey conducted by Black Book found that patient matching discrepancies can lead to nearly $2,000 in extra inpatient costs per person. No one should pay more than they have to for their healthcare, and UPIs can make sure bills are appropriately assessed.  For this year’s Patient Safety Awareness Week, spread the word to your patients that measures have been put into place to protect their identity. As of the end of 2019, every person in the U.S. has been assigned a UPI, and correct and complete information will be associated with each patient. Everyone should be aware that you are taking steps to ensure the accuracy of their medical records — which keeps them safe and their financial obligations down.