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Tip: Process improvements make staff invested, accountable

Patient Financial Services Weekly Advisor, October 8, 2004

Editor's note: Jennifer Bette, supervisor, admitting, St. Helena (CA) Hospital, shares her success in improving quality in her department

Our process improvement initiative for 2004 has been "The Year of Accuracy and Accountability."

One of our areas of opportunity was to improve accuracy and quality in registrations. The department had been focusing on speed and quantity, and the error rate was high.

I believe all four components-accuracy, quality, speed, and quantity-can be accomplished if employees are given the right tools and knowledge.

As part of the initiative, we continuously fine tune our processes and look for ways to improve productivity while ensuring outstanding quality. If an employee's error is attributed to a loss in revenue for the hospital, he or she is immediately counseled and educated in order to prevent a repeat of the error.

Employee accountability was another area we wanted to improve. We created a quality control process that enables me to create a monthly outline and graph of each employee's errors. These data are passed on to the employee to review and determine those areas on which they need to focus.

We have incorporated the following into our process:

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