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Set achievable goals for an incentive program

Patient Access Weekly Advisor, February 13, 2008

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Marilyn Lipka, vice president of Wolfskill & Associates, a national healthcare revenue cycle consulting firm in Ohio, provides some guidelines about how to start incorporating an incentive program from a registration perspective. She says the first step is to define what your program will be and specifically what you want it to achieve.

Here, Lipka outlines some important steps toward realizing your department goals:

1. Set achievable targets. Keep reviewing them to make sure they make sense as things progress.
2. Validate that the audits are fair and objective. Ask your staff members if they think your auditing process is fair.
3. Communicate all along the way. Communicate not only with the staff member about their day-to-day performance, but allow them to know how the facility is performing as a whole. One way of doing this is to put your costs and debt reduction charts up for the department to view. This gives staff members the chance to view the effect their individual work is having on the organization.
4. Listen to the feedback. Based on the feedback you receive, revise and adjust your program as needed.
5. Celebrate. Aside from the incentive payout for staff members who meet the eligibility standards for the incentive, Lipka says, "I think you also have to recognize that most of the staff within the registration areas . . . is meeting each of the individual goals, and you should celebrate that as a department. Have dress-down days; bring in lunch. Don't forget to reward everyone."

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