March 17, 2020

Keeping The Wilshire Way During a Crisis

Freeman Jenkins

An incredible amount in our daily lives has changed in the last few weeks as the country ramps up social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19.  Our clients’ daily lives are also rapidly changing to meet the demands of the pandemic. Whether it’s scaling to meet capacity demands, cancelling non-emergent services, leveraging telehealth in new ways, or moving personnel to telework, it will not be business as usual for some time. 

With all that change, we want to provide some insight into how the Wilshire Group is continuing to support our clients remotely and bring valuable revenue cycle expertise to their organizations. Your organization’s revenue cycle needs to adapt and continue to run efficiently for the health of your organization, and The Wilshire Group is still here to help. 

Our approach to working remotely 

Working with clients all over the country, we have a lot of experience leading projects from afar. Working from afar presents unique challenges, but we’ve developed an approach to ensure we can be successful. 

  • Our approach:
      • Intentional communication – status reports, weekly/daily check-ins, shared project tools 
      • Define expectations – work schedule, availability, dates and deliverables 
      • Flexibility – we are happy to connect how and when it works best for you – including outside of standard business hours 
      • Leverage technology – teleconferencing, shared resources, Slack/Teams/Chat 
      • Know how to escalate and keep contact – regular short check-in’s with key stakeholders 
      • Keep the onsite culture – have a virtual lunch, share photos of family, text with close contacts 
      • Discuss the impact of COVID-19 on your project and team, as things continue to evolve, be ready to adapt and remain effective 

 

Defining your approach to billing in a pandemic 

While patient care is first and foremost, making sure you have a plan for how you are going to address the scheduling, registration, charging, and billing of treatment related to COVID-19 or non-acute visits moved out of the clinic/hospital setting is essential to protect your patients and your organization. Whether or not you are a current client, we would be happy to join in planning conversations and provide recommendations for the considerations below. 

    • Some considerations: 
      • Bill patient or insurance only? 
      • Will you waive co-pays? 
      • How will you handle self-pay patients? 
      • Are you prepared to open new units to accommodate demand? 
      • Are you leveraging telehealth for non-emergent cases and screening? And how are you billing for these services?  
      • How will you identify patients that are related to COVID-19? Flagging in registration, population reporting, etc.? 
      • How will you adjust your billing systems to accommodate special handling?
    • Important resources to monitor as billing and reimbursement requirements change:

We would like to extend our heartfelt appreciation to all our clients and partners working on the frontlines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus) in their communities and care for patients. At The Wilshire Group we are well positioned to support organizations through these turbulent times. All our staff are equipped with home offices and workstations to allow for fully remote work. We have video and web conferencing at our disposal to facilitate virtual meetings. If you find yourself in need of an extra set of (virtual) hands, please reach out to us at info@thewilshiregroup.net. 

Freeman Jenkins

Manager, Patient Access

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