Summary: Understanding The Patient Intake Process

Understanding the Patient Intake Process
Kristy Smith
University of Phoenix
HCR/220 Claims Preparation I: Clean Bills of Health
Mrs. Felecia Pettit-Wallace
October 5, 2014

There are several steps used to check a patient in to your facility such as scheduling, preregistration, medical history, patient information collection and documentation, the filling out of the patient health survey, medical history form, gathering a patient’s insurance information and copying their insurance card, or cards if they have multiple carriers. Proficiency is crucial during this process in order to properly gather and review patient health care and insurance information. In reference to billing purposes and the patients visit, this intake process is
When scheduling the appointment, the patient, parent, or guardian will be asked a serious of questions to start the billing and registration process. Information obtained for the initial appointment consists of the patient’s full name, address, date of birth, phone number, the nature of the visit, insurance information, and referral information if applicable. Most medical practices have a preregistration process to check that patients’ healthcare requirements are appropriate for the medical practice and to schedule appointments of the correct length. During the appointment scheduling process, most health care facilities use an appointment scheduling system. These scheduling systems help to simplify the process from automatically sending a reminder to patients to auto sending patient follow ups. New patients utilizing a PPO or HMO, may need information on their coverage or whether or not your facility or provider is within their network of providers. If a patient chooses a physician within the network, they pay less for services than they would if the physician was outside of the specified network. The intake process is critical to setting the conditions for a successful and efficient patient
How long does it take a patient to see the provider once they have gone through scheduling process and upon arrival to the facility? Medical facilities are consumer based so if a patient feels they are not receiving adequate care or are having their time wasted by waiting 2 hours for an appointment they have had scheduled for a month they are less likely to continue utilizing the services provided and/or find someone else to provide those services to their satisfaction. Based on my personal experiences, not many facilities go out of their way to expedite the process and are vulnerable to patients switching facilities. One convenient way would be to mail out required forms to be filled out so they are ready to process upon arrival and check in. I have spent anywhere from 20-30 minutes trying to gather the appropriate information during what was supposed to be scheduled appointment time. I have seen several facilities encouraging you to arrive early to fill out paperwork but that still ends up wasting time that could have been saved if time management was a priority when they consider their quality and efficiency of patient care (Wojtys & Schley,