March 12, 2014
Texas-based Medical Center Hospital Implements Convergent's PatientQuest Solution
By Carolyn J Dawson
TMCnet Contributor
Convergent Revenue Cycle Management recently announced that the Healthcare Business Insights' (HBI) Revenue Cycle Academy has conducted a study based on the Medical Center Hospital’s (MCH) implementation of Convergent’s PatientQuest solution. In 2007, Texas-based MCH had an online pre-registration form and a dedicated pre-registration hotline; however both the methods placed an emphasis on the patients contacting the hospital. With PatientQuest’s pre-arrival patient access, MCH is able to be pre-emptive and improve the process as well as the quality for the customers at the same time.
MCH chose Convergent for its patient access solutions, the Convergent CARE PatientQuest. PatientQuest is dedicated to provide physician as well as patient satisfaction. Some of the key benefits of PatientQuest include increase in operating budget by reducing claim denials, errors in reimbursements, charity and bad debt, leading to optimized financial performance; increased payment at the point of service; optimized quality of service; lowers number of missed appointments, faster patient registration, and increased physician and patient loyalty.
In a release, Derek Pickell, CEO of Convergent's healthcare division, said, "Our goal is to not only help expedite the patient registration process, but further improve our clients' financial performance by decreasing insurance denials associated with the patient access process, accelerating patient throughput during the pre-arrival process, and increasing cash collections. All of this will be achieved while ensuring improved patient and physician satisfaction with the pre- arrival process. We are the leading vendor partner in the industry providing our PatientQuest solution in support of the pre-arrival and patient satisfaction process for healthcare providers."
MCH has implemented PatientQuest to enhance primarily its patient pre- registration process, insurance information verification, payment estimation, confirmation of patient’s ability to pay in cash, and collection and documentation of patient’s credit. According to the study, the percentage of the pre-registered scheduled patients rose from 40 percent to an aggregate of 80–90 percent; significant reductions of the time-to-wait at registrations counter from 25 minutes to 11 minutes; and marked improvement in registration accuracy from 87 percent to 97 percent.
PatientQuest also comprises of physician orders, scheduling, medical necessity determination, financial counseling, red flag rules, third party funding, reminder calls, expedited admissions, and increased quality assurance. Convergent Revenue Cycle Management is a leading innovative revenue cycle management firm.
Edited by Cassandra Tucker