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Incentive plans: Give a little, get a lot back 

Patient Access Weekly Advisor, October 24, 2007

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Teresa Bassett, the patient access director at Riverside Health System (RHS) in Newport News, VA, knew that the best way to make the organization's aggressive time-of-service (TOS) collections and registration quality initiatives fly was to get staff members excited about them.

In October 2005, well before many of its peers thought to develop and implement an organized rewards program, RHS began challenging staff members to perform their registration duties more efficiently by giving them an incentive to be great at their jobs.

The results have been tremendous-RHS has seen increased TOS collections, fewer registration mistakes, and little staff turnover.

First, Bassett set out to educate staff members about their importance to the financial well-being of the organization. All too often, registration staff members receive too much of the criticism and not enough of the praise, she says.

"I wanted our staff to understand how important they are. If they don't do the job well, we won't get paid timely or possibly at all," Bassett says. "I wanted to build their confidence and show that they are not just a registrar."

To further this goal, RHS began offering $500 bonuses for patient access staff members who passed the certified patient access associate exam.

RHS paid the exam fee the first time for each staff member who took the exam. Eighty percent of the system's patient access staff members took the exam, and 75% passed.

"Staff morale was dramatically increased," Bassett says.

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