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MD Anderson formalizes patient access functions, tasks

Patient Access Weekly Advisor, October 10, 2007

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MD Anderson Cancer Center is a Houston-based specialty hospital providing inpatient and outpatient services for patients with cancer and those suspected of having cancer. The organization sees approximately 26,000 new patients each year and schedules and financially clears about 1.8 million outpatient appointments.

Patient access staff members are in each department and are responsible for patient registration and financial clearance functions. However, MD Anderson previously lacked a formal staffing model for patient access. MD Anderson's patient access departments teamed up with performance improvement staff to develop a staffing model for patient access.

At its most basic form, a staffing model illustrates the merging of the amount of time it takes to perform a task and the number of times that task is performed. However, in actual real-world applications, the complexity of accurately calculating staffing needs can be overwhelming.

To determine the number of necessary full-time equivalents (FTE), MD Anderson needed to calculate the number of productive hours an employee works per year. The standard 2,080 hours is not an accurate reflection. The staffing model team analyzed payroll data and determined that the average patient access specialist worked 1,850 productive hours per year. The hospital excluded nonproductive hours (e.g., vacation, sick days, and training) and factored in an additional 14% of the productive hours to account for personal time, fatigue, delays, and interruptions. The team also eliminated the supervisor from the final required FTE count.

Provided by Connie Longuet and David Bivens

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