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Q: For those PFS departments who use a team style for communication and meetings, who is involved and how frequently do you meet?

Patient Financial Services Weekly Advisor, June 4, 2004

A: We have the following regular meetings:

1. Monthly: All of PFS (back end) with the corporate director, and central business office (CBO) manager and all staff. We share what's going on at a corporate and divisional level from administration, as well as our key performance indicators.

2. Weekly: Corporate director and CBO manager with all supervisors. The main topics are key performance indicators, any process changes, and any upcoming hospital or departmental events that need input from the corporate director.

3. Biweekly: Corporate director with CBO manager. We discuss the status of ongoing projects and CBO operational issues, including HR/staffing.

4. Biweekly: CBO manager meets with each supervisor to review the agenda for each supervisor/staff meeting below.

5. Biweekly: CBO supervisors meet with their teams (manager attends as often as possible). Main topics include any process changes that affect the area and any news from the supervisor meetings.

Also note that we keep three (but no more than three) team-specific process-improvement projects going at all times. We discuss team updates at this meeting regarding the three open projects. When a project is finished, the group votes on the next project. This has been very successful at gaining team buy-in and has raised the level of perceived interdepartmental communication, which was our main goal.

This may seem like a lot of meetings, but we identified that staff consider interdepartmental communication a top priority for our organization. We believe the best way to accomplish this is by making a clear time commitment to staff toward communicating what is going on at all levels of the organization. This approach toward "making the time" has been embraced by our organization as a whole because it is a key ingredient toward improved communication.

This question was answered by Sue Davis, CPAM, manager, central business office at University Community Health in Tampa, FL.

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