Our primary productivity metric in Operations is closed locations per person. Here are a few tips to help us meet our 1Q, 2020 goal.

  • Escalate to a higher authority in the office by asking for a supervisor or nurse.
  • Offer our patient intake email or a FEDEX label to have the records expedited to us.
  • Choose different options on the phone to speak with someone different if you are unable to reach MR (example, provider office, nurse line, appt line if calling an office).  For the Hospital, try the operator as they will transfer and it will seem like an in house call MR is more likely to pick up .
  • Make sure we are using the correct contact info, Google the phone #, make sure we check the area code
  • Ask all questions the first time you speak to someone, verify if it’s the correct facility, does the doctor we are requesting records from works here, do they have the patient in their system
  • Stop refaxing for missing reports instead of calling the facility (unless you know it’s a facility that cannot verify over the phone)
  • Use outside departments to check for missing records or when MR is not answering, i.e., cardiology dept, echo lab, etc.
  • Bypass the copy service by asking for a supervisor, office manager, or going to an outside department.
  • Check previous cases and the unclaimed auth folder for auths
  • Follow the patient auth workflow, ask the requestor for alternate contact information after day 3 of not reaching the patient, and close the case after 5 days of not reaching the patient.
  • Stay on top of the CSS queue, they should only sit there for an hour
  • Ask the right questions when doing the initial follow up. Confirm the request was received, and obtain an exact TAT. Also ask if they will be sending all records.
  • Do all that you can to reach someone. We should never go more than 2 days of not speaking with anyone. If you continue to reach a voicemail for the MR department try another department and ask to be transferred in, ask for a nurse or a doctor’s assistant directly, try every single phone option, etc. and if this does not work, involve your RTL.