THIRD NATIONAL MEDICAL BANKING INSTITUTE

February 24-25, 2005

Nashville, TN

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David Harris, CMPA, MBA, CHE, National Revenue Cycle Partner

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

New York, NY

Title:  Using Kiosks to Redesign Patient Access and Flow

Session Focus/Summary:

The concept of replacing registrars (intake personnel) with kiosks with ATM functionality is relatively new.  Kiosks started with banking, moved on to check-in at airports and quickly migrated to hotels such as the Marriott.  Kiosks are the future for a lot of industries--including healthcare--and will eliminate the need for a manual, paper intensive processes that create long lines and poor customer service.  By connecting disparate hospital systems such as Scheduling, Master Patient Index/Medical Records, Admitting, Discharge & Transfer (ADT) and patient accounting to a new kind of clearinghouse that represents the payer and their banking partner responsible for administering Health Savings Accounts; patients can check in at the kiosk, pay their co-payment, receive a check-in slip/encounter form and even get color coded directions to their ancillary department or clinic compliments of Map Quest.

Learning Objectives:

1. How banking style Kiosks/ATMs can revolutionize the patient encounter (access/intake) like they have in banking, airlines and now hotels.  Kiosks can eliminate the paper and manual intervention involved with registering patients and collection co-pays/deductibles.  As a result, hospitals can become more efficient and cost effective in their revenue cycle.

2. Traditional information system solutions will not address this opportunity.  The different stakeholders required to create this degree of change in how patients access healthcare providers are:  banks, payers and legacy vendors.

3. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) will become a "key" factor in redefining how patient financial responsibilities are handled.  By moving the cash collections up front at time of registration, the industry will eliminate the need for outdated patient statements which are often confused with payer's explanations of benefits (EOBs).

Biography:

David Harris is a Partner with the Healthcare Advisory Practice in PricewaterhouseCoopers' New York office.  He has 20 years industry experience in the healthcare and information systems field.  David is the National Partner for PwC's revenue cycle practice that specializes in hospital and physician revenue cycle operations improvement, provider turnarounds/workouts, process redesign and business office integration, as well as denial management using HIPAA.  He is responsible for the thought leadership, products and methodologies used by PwC's more than 100 revenue cycle professionals with in-depth knowledge of patient access, clinical documentation, health information management, inpatient and ambulatory coding, billing, collections, A/R management and information systems.