Patient Access Monthly Journal Source: The Academy of Healthcare Revenue
The Central Role of Access Staff in Uninsured Health Events
As Cover the Uninsured Week approaches (April 23 – 29, 2007), both federal and state lawmakers across the nation are looking for ways to continue and expand funding for uninsured children through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The main focus of Cover the Uninsured Week this year, therefore, is on highlighting the success of SCHIP, demonstrating the need for the program’s reauthorization and expansion. Patient access leaders and staff members can play an extremely important role in this mission.
By assisting in planning hospital-hosted events such as health and enrollment fairs to highlight SCHIP and Cover the Uninsured Week, patient access staff members can help their organizations to provide uninsured children and their families with basic preventive services and screenings, thus improving the overall health of their communities. Furthermore, health and enrollment fairs can also benefit the healthcare providers that host these events. Health and enrollment fairs constitute a very clear and quantifiable benefit to the surrounding community, and can be reported to state and federal regulators in providers’ community benefit reports. This helps non-profit healthcare providers to justify and defend their tax-exempt status.
A very important role patient access staff members can play during health fairs is to assist uninsured individuals in accessing financial coverage for primary and follow-up care in the future. Helping qualified uninsured patients to enroll in state and federal funding programs for healthcare services can prevent bad debt for healthcare providers in the future. Patient access staff members can also help patients to schedule any needed follow-up services, thereby helping to boost patient volume and revenue for their organizations.
Last but not least, the publicity hospitals can gain from hosting health and enrollment fairs can help to improve the community’s perception of the hospital as a caring and giving member of the community.
The specific goals of Cover the Uninsured Week 2007’s health and enrollment fairs are to:1
Enroll eligible, uninsured children and adults in low-cost and free health care coverage programs
Demonstrate the local healthcare community’s commitment to helping people who are uninsured and to finding a solution for people living without healthcare coverage
Inform uninsured individuals about their health and available health resources
Encourage participants to make positive changes to their lifestyle and behavior in order to improve their overall health
Raise public awareness and concern about the importance of healthcare coverage as well as the personal and financial impact that individual community members’ lack of healthcare coverage has on the community as a whole
Hosting health and enrollment fairs can provide financial benefits for hospitals—not to mention building positive relationships with and improving the overall health of providers’ communities. Participating in well-publicized national events such as Cover the Uninsured Week as well as planning and hosting smaller health and enrollment fairs of their own is one way healthcare providers—and patient access staff—can create a “win-win” situation for themselves and their communities.
1 “Acts of Charity: Charity Care Strategies for Hospitals in a Changing Landscape,” PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute, 2006.
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Media Contact Ross Monaghan
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