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Increase productivity through employee incentives

Patient Access Weekly Advisor, February 20, 2008

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Beverly McCauslin, manager of central scheduling and communication support for TriHealth, Inc., says their employee incentive program has three levels of incentives: 4% payout, 6% payout, and 8% payout. To measure quality, target indicators are checked monthly for each scheduler, such as incomplete and missing ICD-9 codes, diagnosis misspellings, mismatching of the diagnosis and procedure, and scheduling errors.

To measure productivity, McCauslin's department relies on the phone and scheduling systems to provide accurate statistical data reports. A productivity chart is given to each scheduler every month.

It contains all data elements, such as inbound and outbound calls, number of procedures scheduled, and the average time a caller is on hold. The productivity chart allows them to see which staff members are eligible for incentives and gives staff members the opportunity to view their own performance and know for what raise they might qualify.

"There are no surprises for our employees--they know how they are doing month to month, and even day to day, because they get their auditing sheet back on a daily basis," McCauslin says.

Since the inception of the program, McCauslin's department has seen increased productivity with only a 0.5 FTE increase. She reports that since 2000, their inbound and outbound calls have increased by 30%, and the number of scheduled procedures has increased by 32.5%. At the same time, accuracy improved.

"When we implemented this incentive plan, our accuracy in 2000 was at 90%. Our accuracy is currently at 97.8%," McCauslin says. "Our phone monitoring-where we listen into the calls and see how our script is going and if our employees are touching on the appropriate data elements-in 2000, that was 85%. In 2001, after implementation of the incentive plan, it went up to 90%, and currently, it's 99%."

McCauslin says that at the time they started the incentive program, staff members felt the goals might be unattainable.

"They just felt overwhelmed; that this was impossible," she says. "After it was implemented, and we did some training with the employees, in 2004 the targets had to be adjusted again because everyone was making the incentives." As each employee reaches a target, they can receive $300-$800 per quarter depending on which target they achieve and their hourly rate. McCauslin reports that 19 out of 22 of her employees are eligible for an incentive bonus. Most of her employees also receive a 6% raise annually because they've met all their incentive targets.

"The incentive program in central scheduling at TriHealth has been very successful," she says. "It has really helped us to maintain and encourage our staff."

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