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Tip: Central scheduling: A proven incentive program

Patient Access Weekly Advisor, April 9, 2008

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Linda Hogel, RN, project coordinator for access and care management at TriHealth, Inc., Good Samaritan, and Bethesda North hospitals in Cincinnati says developing and implementing an employee incentive program was "quite a challenge," but the backing of HR was a big help.

The program, which was implemented in 2000, assesses three areas of central scheduling: quality, productivity, and attendance.

"Those are our three key criteria for measuring the outcomes for the incentive program and awarding the bonuses to the individual employees," says Hogel. Each department then develops its own quality, productivity, and attendance standards to be measured against the company standard.

Beverly McCauslin, manager of central scheduling and communication support for TriHealth, Inc., says the program has three levels of incentives: 4% payout, 6% payout, and 8% payout. To measure quality, target indicators are checked on a monthly basis 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.

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